


Written in Sand

by MuseofWriting



Series: Remembering the Stars [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bilingual Lance (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, I promise klance will happen eventually, Insecure Lance (Voltron), M/M, Memory Loss, Underage Drinking, alllll of the angst, and we'll see the other paladins, because it is going to take a while, blade of marmora, but you're gonna have to be patient, especially at the beginning, keith is a human disaster, more lancelot than initially expected, the real otp of this fic is lance x letters from the desert cryptid man, this is VERY HEAVILY Lance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2018-09-20 10:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 113,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9486329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseofWriting/pseuds/MuseofWriting
Summary: Lance wakes up in a hospital on Earth to discover he has been missing for four months, with no memory of Voltron or the Galra. Drawn inexplicably to the desert where they found him, he discovers a hut full of research and notes that may provide the key to his missing memories. With secrets and conspiracies surrounding him, and the Garrison potentially hiding far more than he could ever have imagined, Lance grows to trust the notes in the desert - but he may not believe the person who claims he wrote them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Dialogue in italics indicates they are speaking Spanish_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Credit to [@allsunkenhearts](http://allsunkenhearts.tumblr.com/) for the translation of the part ACTUALLY written in Spanish. Thank you so much for your help!
> 
> Trigger warning for the depiction of an anxiety attack at the end of the chapter. Please read carefully.

            One step, then another. One foot at a time. One more step. One more step. One more step.

            The sun beat mercilessly through his suit, its black fibers greedily sucking up light and the heat that came with it. Meanwhile his face, his hands, and the back of his neck, wherever skin was bare it was growing steadily hotter and tighter, stretching uncomfortably every time he moved. His legs ached, creaking with exhaustion and weak with heat. His clothes were starting to chafe at him, itching against his wrists and his ankles. Occasionally the shirt started to ride up, exposing a thin strip of his lower back that blazed with painful warmth every time it was uncovered again. A distracted thought slipped across his brain: he wouldn’t be able to sleep comfortably for a week with the sunburn he was getting.

            One more step. One more step. One more step.

            His brain beat with his pulse, too fast and weak against his skull. His eyes seemed unable to focus on anything. His breaths fluttered through his mouth, hot air pulled in past a heavy, useless, tongue to scrape against the back of his throat. His muscles felt loose and shaky and his clothes were crusty with dried sweat.

            He had been soaked when he started walking. Now, his entire body was dry as a bone. Some piece of filed away knowledge whispered that that was bad.

            One more step. One more step. One more step.

            The world shifted and slipped and crumbled at the edges like the sand underneath his feet. Edges of thoughts peeked around dark corners in his brain but he couldn’t grasp them. He held on only to the knowledge that he had to keep walking, held onto his mantra for dear life, clinging on by his fingernails. One more step. One more step. He just had to take one more step, and then he could rest.

            One more step. One more step. One more step.

            His vision was blurring. The sun was ruthlessly bright, white light stabbing his eyes. He wanted so badly to close them, to stop for just a moment.

            He was starting to see things. A face dominated by round glasses that reflected the sunlight and burned away in its white fire. A headband unraveling and crumbling into sand. A scar across the world that seemed to break it in half, only for it to reform again. A pair of dark, round eyes that flashed purple before evaporating.

            One… more… step…

 

*****

 

            Someone was squeezing his hand so tightly it was starting to go numb. A voice spoke in a long, low rush of Spanish, her voice settling like warm, calm water in his chest. He licked his lips. Why was his mouth so dry? His skin felt tight and hot with sunburn. Had he fallen asleep outside?

            _“…and Louisa is going to be back soon with Cal, she went to pick him up from school. He wanted to drop everything and come see you as soon as he heard but he had to talk to his dean first, would you believe they made him come in for an in-person meeting even though you were even in the news, it was ridiculous, but they got it sorted and he’s on his way now. Could you wake up for him, baby? He cried for months, it would mean so much to him to come in and see you up and talking. And Louisa, Louisa had to tear herself away, she ordered me to call her immediately if you so much as twitched a finger—”_

 _“Mamá?”_ he murmured, his words dry and cracked on his stiff tongue. The voice stopped, and the pressure on his hand increased. He thought he could feel someone leaning over him.

            “Lance?”

            _“I’m awake, Mamá_ ,” he managed. He felt like he hadn’t had a drink of water in ten years. His eyes struggled to open, eyelashes sticking together, and he squeezed them shut again briefly as a rush of light hit him. Trying a second time, he caught a look of his mamá’s face, bending over him, anxiety written into lines and sags he didn’t remember. And then suddenly, she was practically on top of him.

            “ _Lance_!” she cried, making him cringe as his ribs protested her hug. _“Ah, sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, baby, I’m just so glad you’re all right_.” She pulled back and he caught sight of the tears streaked across her cheeks. He frowned. His head felt like it was full of cotton balls. Why was she so upset?

            _“I’m fine, Mamá,_ ” he said. _“Do you… have a glass of water?”_ She wiped at her tears, sniffing, and nodded, seeming unwilling to take her eyes off of him.

            _“One moment, let me call the nurse. I’ll be_ right back _, okay? This will only take a second.”_ She lingered for a moment longer, sniffling again, and then bustled off. Lance turned his head, looking at the room. He was in a hospital, IV tubes dripping fluid into his arm, bandages stretched across his skin. What had happened?

            His mother was back faster than he would have thought possible, holding his hand while a nurse delivered a glass of water with instructions to drink it slowly. She checked his vitals and made some scribbles on a chart while he sipped at it until his mouth no longer felt like it was made of sandpaper. His mother smiled through an unending stream of tears, holding his hand as if she never intended to let go.

            “How are you feeling, Mr. Sanchez?” the nurse asked, smiling at him warmly. Lance frowned.

            “I’m… I’m okay, I guess but… Sorry, what happened? Why am I in the hospital? I think I was… in the desert?”

            “You made it to just a mile outside town,” his mother said. “They said you must have walked quite a long way.”

            “But where…” he trailed off, trying to rewind his thoughts. A sudden horrifying realization struck him. “Hunk and Pidge!” he yelped. “Are they okay?” The nurse and his mother glanced at each other, and that one look sent a stone sinking into Lance’s stomach.

            “Were they with you?” his mother asked gently. Lance gaped, grasping desperately at his memories. Why were they slipping through his fingers like this? Why did everything he could remember seem so far away?

            “We… I’m not sure. We, um, we snuck out, well, Hunk and I did, we saw Pidge go up to the roof, and…” He stopped and shook his head. “Are we… in trouble?” he asked timidly. His mother brought her other hand up to grab his.

            “No, no, no you’re not in trouble, baby,” she assured him. “Please, just tell us what happened. Where did you sneak out of?” Lance frowned.

            “The Garrison, of course,” he said. His mother froze. There was another glance between her and the nurse.

            “Honey,” she said, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “Is sneaking out of the Garrison the last thing you remember?”

            “Well… yeah. I guess. I have no idea how I ended up in the desert. Does this mean Hunk and Pidge are out missing somewhere?” His mother pressed her lips together. Lance looked between her and the nurse, panic blooming in his chest. Had he gotten Hunk and Pidge into serious danger somehow? They were just planning to go into town, weren’t they? What could possibly have gone so wrong? He knew the look on his mother’s face, and it never boded well. “What?” he asked.

            “Lance,” she said, holding his hand close to her, “you, Hunk, and Pidge all disappeared from the Garrison over four months ago.”

 

*****

 

            His fingers tapped an aimless rhythm across the sheet. The knuckles were scraped and bruised and the palms sported calluses he didn’t remember. He watched them, skittering atop the hospital bed, imperfection blaring against the crisp clinical white sheets, as he avoided looking up to meet the gazes that all zeroed in on him. He hunched his shoulders, and felt Louisa tighten her arm around them, an effort at comfort that only left him feeling more trapped. “ _Take your time_ ,” she murmured in his ear, but he didn’t want to take his time, not with Hunk and Pidge lost somewhere in an unforgiving desert. He’d had his time taken from him, and no matter how hard he thought he couldn’t seem to bring it back.

            “Maybe if we just… start over at the beginning, and go over it again.” The detective sounded tired, tucking his notebook under his arm in order to rub at his eyes. Lance looked up at him slowly. His suit was frayed at the cuffs and collar and there was sand stuck to his shoes. His eyes were bracketed with crow’s feet, scattered grey hairs jumped out against his black hair and skin, and there was an overall slump to his shoulders that spoke of too many long nights and time spent hunched over case files. He’d introduced himself as Detective Todd Hopkins, one of the lead investigators into Lance’s disappearance four months ago. The investigation into three teenagers who somehow managed to completely vanish during a lockdown that had not produced a single shred of evidence of their whereabouts. Louisa was watching at him dubiously.

            “I want to help, really I do, but I just… I can’t remember anything. Really, I don’t have a clue,” Lance said. His eyes stung. “I can’t…”

            “It’s not uncommon to suffer temporary amnesia in the wake of a traumatic experience,” the doctor spoke up gently from the other side of the room. “With rest and time to process everything, the memories will most likely begin to return in a few days.” He stood up and walked over to the bed, smiling at Lance. “You’ve clearly been through a lot. You shouldn’t push yourself. If you don’t start to remember what happened, we can put you in touch with some therapists who might be able to help, but for right now the best strategy is just to try and recover.” He turned to the detective. “There’s no use in berating him. He’ll remember when he remembers.” Detective Hopkins sighed, rubbing his forehead.

            “There’s one more thing,” he said. “Those clothes we found you in. What can you tell us about them?” Lance stared.

            “My… clothes?” he asked uncertainly.

            “They weren’t yours, honey, they checked with me while you were asleep,” his mother said from her chair in the corner. “I don’t know where you could possibly have found them.” Lance opened and closed his mouth a few times, struggling for any answer besides another “I don’t know.”

            “I… I’m pretty sure when I left I was just… wearing normal clothes?” he said. He looked from Louisa, to his mamá, to the detective. “Um… a… blue shirt, I think, and just, just jeans I guess. And that jacket, that dark green one I wear all the time. What… what was I wearing when you found me?”

            “ _Something real weird_ ,” Louisa muttered in his ear. He tensed, and she rubbed his arm apologetically.

            “It was some kind of skin-tight black… a sort of full-body…” The detective gestured unhelpfully.

            “It was a what now.” Lance felt his stomach roiling. What the hell had he gotten mixed up in? Was this some kind of sick bondage sex thing? His toes curled under the sheet and he wondered how embarrassing it would be to have to sprint to the bathroom. To his relief, the detective pulled out a photograph of the clothes. Not nearly as bad as he had been expecting.

            “Do you recognize this outfit?” Lance took the picture and stared at it, willing it to recall something, some inkling of a memory, but he couldn’t even manage a touch of déjà vu. He handed it back to the detective.

            “No. Sorry.” Hopkins sighed and rubbed his forehead again, scrubbing it vigorously with the heel of his palm.

            “I guess that means you can’t tell us what it’s made of, either? Damn.”

            “Don’t you have crime lab scientists for that?” Louisa asked.

            “They’ve got no clue. Say it’s some kind of fiber they’ve never seen before. No one can explain it. You _sure_ you don’t remember anything, Mr. Sanchez? Anything at all? Even the smallest detail might help.” Lance shook his head miserably. Hopkins let out yet another long-suffering sigh and tucked his notebook away, resigned but unsurprised. He pulled out a card.

            “Listen, kid, as soon as you remember anything, I want you to give me a call, alright? Your friends are still out there and you walked too far through a desert to give us any real clues on where they might be. We’re reopening the investigation, but unless you can come up with something we’re just going to run into the same brick wall of nothing as before.” Lance’s bruised and callused hand held the card carefully on his lap as he nodded, unwilling to meet the detective’s gaze.

            “I’ll show you out,” the doctor said, holding open the door. Louisa squeezed his shoulders again as they left.

            “ _It’s okay, Lance. You made it, so I’m sure Hunk and Pidge are fine_.” He shook his head and buried it in his hands, crumpling the detective’s card, the edge of the cardstock digging into his forehead. The stinging in his eyes grew, threatening to overflow into tears.

            “ _I really thought they were_ with _me,_ ” he said. “ _I can’t remember anything but that’s all I’ve got – I think wherever I was, Hunk and Pidge were with me. What happened? What if they’re dead? What if I ran off and left them somewhere?_ ” Louisa rubbed circles on his back.

            “ _Don’t be ridiculous, Lance, you wouldn’t do that_.” Calixto was leaning against the wall by the door, his arms crossed. He had shoulders as broad as a house and a permanent scowl on his face unless you told him a good math joke, which always made him laugh for at least five minutes before you could get him to stop. He was going to college at Skilton University, a sort of sister school to the Garrison that taught theoretical physics and pure mathematics. Lance had joked when he first became a pilot that Cal’s friends at Skilton would keep him in the air in theory while the Garrison did it in practice. Four years older than him, Cal had seriously skewed his perception of how smart most people were for a long time. He’d thought for a while that he would have to publish at least one paper about quantum physics if he wanted to graduate high school.

            “ _Whatever happened, the most important thing is that you are here and safe_ ,” Cal continued. “ _And if we found you after we’d all just about given up hope, then we can find Hunk and Pidge too._ ” The scowl seemed to push deeper into his face. Wiggling out of Louisa’s grip, Lance held out his arms.

            “ _Hey, Cal, come here, I haven’t give you a proper hug yet_ ,” he said. Cal hesitated, then crossed the room in a flash and caught Lance in a surprisingly gentle hold, nothing like the brief bone-crushers he usually gave as holiday greetings. Lance wrapped his arms around his brother’s neck and rested his cheek on his shoulder, closing his eyes and breathing slowly. Some tension seemed to leak out of his chest. This felt safe, this felt like home – more than the Garrison ever had. They stayed that way for a long moment before Cal gave a funny little shudder and pulled away, swiping at his eyes.

            “ _I’m so happy you’re safe, Lance. I really… I really thought we’d lost you_.”

            “ _You gave us all a big scare_ ,” Louisa said, reaching out to squeeze his hand. He squeezed back. Everything felt tenuous and unreal, as if any moment he might squeeze too hard and this dream would pop, and he’d be back… wherever he was.

            A phone dinged in the quiet, and his mother, half-dozing in her chair, started. “ _Ah, your papá is here with Beatriz, Max, and Manuel, and Tío Javier with Elena. I better go–_ ”

            “ _I’ll go get them, Mamá_ ,” Louisa said, sliding off her perch on the edge of Lance’s bed. She reached out and ruffled his hair. “ _Be back in just a minute, little bro_ ,” she told him.

            “ _I’m less than a year younger than you, Louisa_!” Lance called after her, feeling the corners of a smile pulling at his lips. Good to know some things would never change.

 

*****

 

            The nurses had a job convincing Lance’s family to clear out as it started to get late, insisting that his condition was stable and the best thing they could do for him would be to leave and let him get some sleep. It took them over an hour, with Manuel, Lance’s six-year-old little brother, running back over and over to give him one last hug. Finally, though, he was left alone in the room, admittedly tired enough to fall asleep almost as soon as he lay back on his pillow.

            He woke up disoriented by the unfamiliar bed and the dark, the cottony hospital gown awkwardly scrunched up under his hip. He swung himself up to a sitting position, slid off the bed and stumbled, yawning, towards the bathroom.

            “…that Sanchez case is strange, though.”

            The words drifted through his door, open a crack, and he paused on the other side of it, his sleep-addled brain latching onto the words and trying to thrash through them for meaning.

            “What do you mean?”

            “Did you hear Dr. Young talking to that detective earlier today? Or even just look at his charts. Kid goes missing for four months, turns up in the middle of the desert, but aside from the immediate symptoms of dehydration and heat stroke, there isn’t anything seriously wrong with him. He’s not malnourished, he doesn’t have any ligature marks, he’s a little cut and bruised but it looks more like he tripped than that he got in a serious fight. There’s no sign of muscle atrophy, no sign of recent major injuries, no sign of prolonged dehydration, no sign of… anything, really. In fact, he’s in peak physical condition. It looks like he was doing fine until he up and decided to take a five-hour walk through the desert. Wherever he’s been for the last four months, they’ve been taking good care of him.”

            “Do you think he’s lying?”

            “Well if there’s a traumatic experience he’s blocking out, it isn’t anything physical.”

            “What did the detective say?”

            “He didn’t know what to think – and neither does Dr. Young.”

            “Weird. Well, I guess we’ll see if he gets his memory back soon.”

            “He IS just a kid. Although, where he could possibly have been for four months, with his face stuck on every lamppost and milk carton in town…”

            “Narnia. Clearly he went to Narnia.”

            The nurses’ laughter drifted away down the hall, leaving Lance unmoving and covered in cold sweat. He looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them. He felt wrong inside his own body. He didn’t recognize his own hands, didn’t know the hard muscles in his arms, didn’t understand how he could just be missing four whole months from his life. _Remember, remember, remember, come on, Sanchez, this shouldn’t be this hard_. He wrapped his arms around himself, squeezing his eyes shut, the cold floor pressing through the thin hospital slippers into his feet. His breath threatened to choke him. _Why can’t I remember?_ It felt just out of reach, something terrible looming on the horizon, something he needed desperately to know, but every time he reached out it crumbled away like sand. His heart thundered in his chest, beating against his brain, _remember, remember, come on, rememberrememberrememberREMEMBER_ —

            Lance flung himself back onto his bed, buried his face into his pillow and screamed, once, twice, then stopped and lay there, nose squashed, heaving with breath. He was gripping the sheets in his fists, hanging on white-knuckled as if he might find himself drifting through nothing if he let go. The pillow was getting wet under his face.

            Once his heart slowed he pushed himself up to his elbows, wiping away tears and snot. He stumbled to the bathroom, feeling blindly for a light switch and squeezing his eyes shut for a moment in the sudden brightness. He snagged a handful of toilet paper, blowing his nose and wiping off his hands. He closed the door, and then collapsed to sit on the toilet, pulling his feet up to the seat, wrapping his arms around his legs and resting his chin on his knees. He stayed there, breathing in the sharp scent of hospital cleaning supplies, the cold of the toilet seat and the glaring white of the walls all comfortingly, undeniably real.

            “My name is Lance Sanchez,” he said. “Mi nombre es Lance Sanchez. I am seventeen years old. Tengo diecisiete años. I am from Cuba, and I came here when I was thirteen to start studying to become a pilot. Nací en Cuba, y vine aquí cuando tenía trece años para estudiar y convertirme en piloto. I am going to be the best damn fighter pilot the Garrison has ever seen. Voy a ser el mejor piloto que el Garrison haya visto jamás. And nothing that might have happened in the last four months has changed any of that. Y nada que pueda haber ocurrido en los últimos cuatro meses ha cambiado algo de todo eso.” He dropped his head down and pressed his forehead against his legs, trying to breathe evenly. He shivered, the chill of the bathroom seeping in through the thin hospital gown, and slowly pushed himself back to his feet. After fumbling his way through using the toilet, he crawled back into bed, flipping his pillow over, and curled up on his side. “I’ll be fine,” he whispered to himself, squeezing his eyes shut. “And so will Hunk and Pidge. We’ll all be home and safe soon. We will. We will. We will. We will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle in if you plan to keep reading because this is going to be a long and angsty ride my friends
> 
> Thank you for reading! I really hope you enjoyed, and you're intrigued enough to stick around. Please leave me a comment with any thoughts you may have! <3
> 
> If anyone's curious, Lance's siblings are:  
> Calixto (21)  
> Louisa (18)  
> Lance (17)  
> Beatriz (12)  
> Max (10)  
> Manuel (6)
> 
> And his cousin Elena is 15


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance will refer to Pidge with he/him pronouns because he's of course forgotten about Pidge's secret. Pidge's actual pronouns in this fic will be she/her

            His papá was sitting next to the bed with Manuel on his lap, peering at Lance through watery eyes and square glasses, when Iverson walked in.

            Lance shot up ramrod straight, unsure how to stand to attention while in a hospital bed or if he was even supposed to. Iverson’s eye raked over him critically before he muttered, “At ease, boy, you’re in a hospital, not the Garrison.” Lance leaned uneasily back into his pillow. His papá had stood, Manuel peeking out curiously from behind him. He stuck out a hand to Iverson.

            “Hello,” he said. “You must be from the Garrison. I am Lance’s father, Jésus Sanchez.” Lance always forgot how thick his papá’s Cuban accent was when he spoke English. His speech was so slow and careful, completely unlike the quiet but energetic voice that had first told him stories about the stars. Iverson grasped the outstretched hand briefly. “I am happy to see the Garrison is so interested in the, the welfare of its students,” his papá continued. “I was not expecting you.”

            “Well, it’s not every day three of your students vanish without a trace,” Iverson replied, his attention back to Lance, who shrank into his pillow. “How… are you?” he asked. The civility came out like pulling teeth.

            “I’m…” Lance’s voice cracked slightly and he scratched at the sheet, fidgeting with nervousness as he cleared his throat. “I’m much better, sir, they think they’ll be able to discharge me soon.”

            “Good to hear,” he said brusquely. “I suppose if you knew anything about Garrett or Gunderson you’ve already told the police?” Lance’s eyes dropped.

            “I don’t know anything, sir. I’ve lost my memory of the past four months.” Iverson grunted.

            “Well, what are your plans, then?” Lance looked back up in confusion.

            “My… plans, Commander?”

            “Should we expect to see you back at the Garrison or not?” Lance, baffled, looked at his papá for guidance. Between the hospital, the revelation that Hunk and Pidge were missing, and that he had somehow forgotten four months of his life, he hadn’t even thought about going back to school.

            “I… I hadn’t…”

            “My son has been through a lot, Mr…?”

            “Commander Iverson.”

            “Commander Iverson,” his papá continued smoothly. “This is probably a decision he can make later.” Manuel looked between Lance, his papá, and Iverson, all wide child eyes. Lance met Iverson’s gaze and wondered briefly whether he could fake fainting. His papá stood there calmly, a picture of quiet and collected dignity, in the face of unforgiving stone.

            “Of course,” Iverson said. “Sorry to have bothered you. We’ll pull his file back out of the archives. When you come to a decision, just let us know.” He cast a last look at Lance. “Good to see you alive,” he said, and left. Lance’s papá sighed and sank back into the chair.

            “ _He seemed singularly unpleasant. Who was he, exactly?_ ”

            “ _You have no idea. He’s one of the higher-ups back at the Garrison. He used to yell at me and Hunk and Pidge all the time when we’d do badly in the simulator._ ” Lance smiled at the normality and clarity of the memory, stress leaking away as he relaxed back into the bed.

            “ _And how often did you do badly?_ ” his papá asked sternly. Lance froze, gaping at him, until he broke into a smile. “ _I’m joking, I’m joking._ ” He pulled Manuel back onto his lap. “ _Have you thought about it, though? Whether or not you want to go back? Of course it doesn’t have to be right away – we’d like you to come home for a while first_.” Lance pondered, twisting his hands. Could he even go back to the Garrison without Hunk and Pidge there? He wasn’t exactly a popular kid; Hunk had more or less been his only real friend. Even Pidge, though a nice enough guy, had been a bit standoffish, apparently uninterested in anything except his computer. And he would probably have to drop down to the class below him because of all the time he’d missed, so he wouldn’t know anyone at all. On the other hand, being a pilot had been his dream since he was little. Four months in the desert couldn’t make him forget _that_.

            His papá was responsible, really. He told his kids he had never been cut out for science, never organized or meticulous enough with charts and numbers to become an astrophysicist, but he had always been in love with the stars. So instead, he had started reading about them. Constellations, mythology, history of navigation techniques, songs, everything humans had ever written and thought and dreamed about the stars filled his library. Lance couldn’t have been more than four or five when his papá drove him, Cal, and Louisa out to a field one night with a rickety old telescope, some blankets, a flashlight, and a book of constellations. There he had shown them the stars, told them their stories, pointed out planets. He talked to them for hours, and Lance drank in every moment of it, the beauty of the night sky burying into his heart. Curled up in blankets in the back of their old van, Cal and Louisa fell asleep on the way home, but Lance kept trying to keep his eyes open to look out the window. Right before he lost the battle to the warmth of the blanket and the gentle motion of the car, he murmured to his papá, “ _I want to go there one day. I want to go to the stars_.”

            He looked up and met his papá’s gaze, dark eyes watching him kindly. Manuel was leaning over his shoulder, running a toy car across the back of the chair. It seemed that the novelty of seeing Lance alive and well had already worn off on him. Lance felt a smile pull gently at his mouth.

            “ _I don’t know yet_ ,” he admitted. “ _I think I’d like to go back, but… I have to think about it._ ” His father nodded.

            “ _Dr. Young said you should be discharged from the hospital in the next few days. We will need to take Max and Manuel and Beatriz home soon, so they can get back to school, and your mother and I both ought to get back to work. We… we didn’t touch your room._ ”

            “ _Back in Cuba?_ ”

            “ _Yes?_ ”

            “ _I don’t_ …” Lance twisted the sheets between his hands. “ _I don’t know if I want to go back to Cuba while Pidge and Hunk are still missing. Especially if I might get my memory back any day now_.” His papá chewed his lip thoughtfully.

            “ _I know your mamá and I would really rather have you come home – I’m sure you understand why_.”

            “ _No, of course, of course I get it, but I’m…_ ” Lance sighed, his hands stilling. He wasn’t even sure why he felt like it was so important to stay. “ _I feel like I_ have _to stay. Cuba’s far away, Papá, and if I leave… What if I can help my friends by staying?_ ” Manuel jumped off his papá’s lap and ran across the room, flying his toy car through the air, and made the sounds of it blowing up against the nightstand. His papá looked at him thoughtfully.

            “ _Where would you stay, if you’re not reenrolling in the Garrison? There’s no way we let you go off on your own right after this. We need some time to convince ourselves you aren’t going to vanish again_.” The sheet wound its way around Lance’s finger, squeezing until he could feel his pulse pounding against it. Manuel was running the car along the edge of his bed now. Lance reached out with his free hand and absently ruffled his little brother’s hair, who batted him away, looking offended.

            “ _Cal has an apartment nearby. Maybe I could stay with him?_ ” His papá pondered that silently, pulling off his glasses and wiping them slowly on the hem of his shirt. Lance watched him, Manuel flying his toy car across impossibly vast jumps in the corner of his eye. He crashed the car into a cabinet, imitating the screeching of the metal as he slid the toy down to the floor again. His papá nestled the glasses carefully back on his nose.

            “ _That might work_ ,” he conceded. “ _If Cal is okay with it. Let’s talk it over with him and your mamá tomorrow, okay?_ ”

            “ _Okay, papá_.”

 

*

 

            Louisa yanked the car into park and leaned back in the seat on a long exhale, gazing through the windshield at the cement block apartment building in front of them. A baby blue sky peeked around either side of it, the promise of open air outside a prison. She twirled a hand absently through a loose strand of hair. “I can’t believe you roped _me_ into this,” she said. “I’m missing flight simulations to ferry you around buying underwear and get caught in the middle of you arguing with Mamá and Papá about why you won’t just go home for a few months. Which is why, again?”

            “We’re not arguing, we already talked about it,” Lance mumbled into his lap, knowing full well it wasn’t true. Louisa snorted.

            “Don’t try to lie to me, little bro,” she said, punching his arm lightly. “I’m just surprised Mamá hasn’t strapped you to a plane and dragged you back by force.” Lance chuckled uneasily. Frankly, he was surprised as well. It was probably only a lingering terror from his four months away that made them all handle him with kid gloves right now, so when he insisted he wanted to stay near the Garrison, he got to stay near the Garrison. It wouldn’t last, though. His birthday was in three months and that was the deadline they had agreed on. He was going to get a lovely “feliz cumpleaños” call from his mamá that would end in him buying a plane ticket back to Cuba, unless he reenrolled in the Garrison by then.

            Louisa reached into the back seat of the car and tossed the shopping bag at Lance, hitting him in the chest. “Go on, you can’t avoid them. Not by sitting in my car, anyway,” she said. Lance rolled his eyes and pushed the door open, sliding sideways into the narrow gap between them and the car next to him. “Hey,” Louisa called after him. “You want to stick some money in that meter for me?” Lance looked at her in disbelief.

            “I’m not paying for you to park _your_ car.”

            “Well I’m parking it here _for you_.”

            “I don’t have any money except what Mamá gave me. I was legally dead until a few days ago!” Louisa’s gaze dropped and she gripped the edge of the seat tightly.

            “You weren’t _legally dead_ , Lance,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t happen that fast.” Lance felt his spirits plummet.

            “Oh. Right. Sorry, I…” Lance trailed off, holding the shopping bag of underwear awkwardly up to his chest, still sandwiched in between the two cars. Of course they’d talked to lawyers and police officers about that sort of thing. Of course they’d want to know when they were supposed to stop hoping and stop searching for good. “How long does it take?” he asked, and then immediately wanted to kick himself in the face. What kind of an idiot was he? Louisa’s fingers pressed further into the polyester seat.

            “Seven years, usually,” she said. She wouldn’t meet Lance’s eye. “We thought we were going to have to…” She stopped. Lance wondered briefly and morbidly if they’d held a funeral.

            “Sorry, I… I was being stupid,” he said, shifting with the shopping bag. “It doesn’t feel like it’s been four months for me, so…”

            “It’s fine can we just… not joke about it? Not yet.” Lance nodded, rushing to reassure her, but she stopped him with a tired smile. “Still no memories at all, then?” she asked. He shook his head. Despite the doctor’s reassurances, everything past seeing Pidge sneaking up to the roof was just as blank as it had been when he woke up over a week ago. Sometimes, he thought, when he first woke up he’d think he was somewhere else, confusion at the unfamiliarity of his bed tickling the edge of his brain, but as soon as he came fully awake any memories he’d brushed would seep away again. If the new calluses and muscles that had reshaped his body weren’t there, he might have thought they were all playing some elaborate prank on him. Louisa pursed her lips, her brain whirring at a hundred miles an hour. If Lance knew her at all, she’d spent the last week reading everything she could get her hands on about trauma-induced memory loss.

            Except, if those nurses were to be believed, he hadn’t _been_ through any trauma.

            “Here,” she leaned across the seat to slap a few coins into his hand. “Stick that in the meter. I’m supposed to be studying for a test right now and sitting on Cal’s broken couch while you and Mamá passively aggressively inflate an air mattress isn’t going to cut it. I’ll be down here if you need the car again.” Lance curled his fingers around the money and rolled his eyes.

            “Gee thanks,” he said. “So glad to know I can count on your support.” She winked at him, her too-wide prank grin splitting her face.

            “You know I love you, little bro.”

            “You know you’re insufferable,” he countered. “Don’t smile at me like that, I feel like I’m going to sit down on a whoopee cushion.” She pulled her mouth down into an exaggerated pout.

            “Oh, come on, Lance. You know I would never do that to you. I’m _way_ more creative than that.”

            “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he said, out of good comebacks. “I’ll message you to let you know what’s going on. Or, actually I guess Cal will message you, I don’t have a new phone yet.” Louisa nodded, already leaning in between the seats to grab her fat, Post-It-laden textbook from the floor behind her. Lance shimmied a few steps sideways and shut the car door.

            She was right of course – Louisa was _always_ right – the tension in Cal’s cramped apartment was palpable. Cal himself didn’t seem to mind, keeping half an eye on Manuel as he raced his toy cars across the only counter in the kitchen, but otherwise tapping away endlessly at his computer. Their parents, on the other hand, spared no opportunity to remind him it wasn’t too late to get him a plane ticket, that they were sure he’d be happier in his own bed, that his grandmother and the rest of the family wanted desperately to see him. Lance grit his teeth. It was hard not to cave, when his reason for staying was flimsy at best.

            He _wanted_ to go home. His heart ached at the thought. He hadn’t spent more than two or three months at a time in Cuba since he followed Louisa to boarding school when he was thirteen. He’d spent more time with Manuel over video chat than he had in person. He missed the lilting, rolling sound of Spanish around him, the sharp smell of onions and peppers making his eyes water while he helped his mamá in the kitchen, the colorful buildings pressing close on narrow streets, and the constant, chaotic, loving presence of his family. Even discounting whatever had happened in the past four months, he had spent a long time away, and video chats twice a week just weren’t the same. When he first moved away, if Louisa hadn’t been in the same school as him, he probably would have been flying home in tears within a month. The year he had spent still in prep school once she had moved to Galaxy Garrison had been the hardest of his life, and he had Hunk to thank for getting him through it. The two of them had wound up roommates that year, and Lance knew for an indisputable fact that he would never have gotten into the Garrison without Hunk there to believe in him. They had talked through their assignments together, made up terrible spaceship puns when the other was too panicked over a test or assessment to think straight, and sometimes, in the dark and quiet hours, sat and listened to each other pour out homesickness so overwhelming it threatened to break them in half.

            Lance didn’t think he had ever made it clear to Hunk how deep a debt he owed him for getting him through that year. He wasn’t sure he ever could. But there was no question that if Hunk was missing, then trying to save him was the least Lance could do. He had to stay because he knew, somehow, that that was the only way he would accomplish anything. Whether it was a scrap of memory he couldn’t identify or just good instincts, something was telling him, insisting to him, that he had to stay close.

            He finished folding the fresh underwear into a corner of Cal’s bookshelf with a sigh. His mamá was sitting on the edge of the air mattress watching him, her hands clasped uncomfortably on her lap. Lance waited for another last-ditch attempt.

            “ _We’ll send you a box of clothes and belongings from home as soon as we get there_ ,” she said. “ _You’re sure you have enough to tide you over until then? I can run out with Louisa and just buy a few more things if you’re tired_ —”

            “ _I’m fine, Mamá,_ ” he said, turning and taking her hands. “ _Cal’s going to take good care of me._ ” She bit her lip, her eyes watering.

            “ _You’re absolutely sure you won’t come home?_ ” she said. “ _Even for a few weeks. You know you can always come back. I just want… I just want my baby home where I know he’s safe_.” Lance pulled her into a hug, trying not to let himself shake in her arms.

            “ _I need a bit of time to see if I can sort out what happened to me. But I_ promise _I won’t disappear again. I’ll be here with Cal, and Louisa’s close by as well, it’ll be perfectly safe_.” He felt his papá’s hand fall on his shoulder.

            “ _We’ve got a last follow-up appointment with Dr. Young tomorrow. He’s supposed to refer us to a therapist who might be able to help you with your memory. Then we leave on Sunday. If you change your mind at any point before then, just let us know and you’ll be on the plane with us._ ” Lance nodded, biting the inside of his cheek. He’d cried enough times in the past week. If he broke down now, with his parents there, he was certain he wouldn’t be able to hold his ground.

            “ _Well_ I _don’t think it’s very_ fair _that Lance doesn’t have to go back to school like the rest of us_ ,” Beatriz announced from where she sat cross-legged on a chair across from Cal. Max, next to her and busy with some game on their phone, glanced up to frown at their sister.

            “ _He was in the hospital though_ ,” they said.

            “I _had to go back to school after_ I _was in the hospital_ ,” Beatriz announced, clearly miffed by this inequality.

            “ _Yeah, but you just broke your arm_ ,” Max insisted. “ _That’s normal stuff. Lance doesn’t even_ know _what happened to him. He could still have all sorts of scary problems they don’t know about yet._ ” Lance disentangled himself from his parents’ arms to walk over to his siblings’ chairs and crouched down in between them.

            “ _Max is right_ ,” he told Beatriz. “ _I might be sitting in class and suddenly – BLAM – turn into a purple monster! The teachers wouldn’t know what to do!_ ” Beatriz looked at him flatly, expression unchanging.

            “ _You won’t turn into a purple monster_ ,” she said.

            “ _Oh yeah? How do_ you _know?_ ” he asked. She gave a long-suffering sigh in the way only a twelve-year-old can before reminding Lance very seriously that people didn’t turn purple and anyway there were no such things as purple monsters. And besides, even if he was going to turn into a purple monster, it wasn’t like Cal would know what to do any more than his teachers would. “ _Are you kidding?_ ” Lance asked, trying desperately to hold back his laughter. “ _Cal is the smartest person I know. If there’s anyone who could whip up a cure for purple-monster-itis, I bet it’s him_.” The sound of typing ceased briefly as Cal scowled over the top of his computer.

            “ _I’m a physicist, not a doctor or a biologist_.”

            “ _I see that smile you’re hiding. Admit it, you’d be fascinated._ ”

            “ _You’re already a fascinating study without turning purple_ ,” Cal said, returning to his typing. Lance’s eyes widened comically.

            “ _I’m not sure I like the sound of that. Is that really why you agreed to let me live here for a few months? Am I your next experiment? Hey, Max, Beatriz, you might have to rescue me from our mad scientist brother. Think you could do that?_ ”

            “ _We’d rescue you, Lance! I can take Cal down!_ ” Max piped up. Beatriz rolled her eyes, trying very hard to be too old for all of this. Lance grinned at them both and reached out to ruffle her hair.

            “ _I feel safer already_ ,” Lance laughed.

 

*

 

            The quiet dropped into Lance like a stone when the door shut behind his parents. Cal went back to his computer without a thought, dropping into what Lance was quickly realizing was his favorite chair and typing away rapidly. Lance turned, acutely aware of the sudden lack noise and bodies in the room. The air from the hallway felt cold on his back. He surveyed Cal’s apartment with a sinking feeling, crushing the rising urge to run after his family and tell them yes, take him back to Cuba, he’d changed his mind after all. What was he doing here?

            “Lance?” His head jerked up to see Cal had paused and was looking over his computer screen at him. “You okay?” He swallowed and nodded, waving off his brother’s concerns.

            “I’m fine,” he said, walking over to the air mattress and dropping onto it. “Just peachy.” Cal’s forehead furrowed, clear blue eyes reading Lance like an open book. He rolled onto his stomach to avoid Cal’s gaze, grabbing a book at random off the bookshelf next to him. “I’ll just be over here reading or whatever.”

            “You want to read about the practical applications of nonlinear differential equations?” Cal asked, eyebrows raised. Lance looked at the book in his hands and sheepishly stuck it back on the shelf. “We don’t have to have a heart-to-heart, but Mamá would kill me if she thought I wasn’t taking care of you.” Lance flipped over onto his back, facing the ceiling. Old cracks spiderwebbed across it. He tucked his arms under his head.

            “I’m just adjusting,” he told the ceiling. “I just need a day or two. Things have been kind of crazy since I woke up.” Cal’s waiting silence was palpable, but Lance didn’t break it. Finally Cal sighed, scratching absently at his head.

            “Let me know if you need anything,” he said, and returned to typing. Lance lay looking at the ceiling for a moment longer, trying to draw pictures in the cracks. Turning back onto his stomach, he actually looked at the books that Cal kept.

            Most of them were physics and mathematics books that Lance barely understood the titles of, mixed in with the odd volume on philosophy or politics. Lance slid his finger across their spines, marveling that Cal still bought physical copies of dense and heavy monsters like these. He had always liked permanence: something he could feel the weight of in his hand, something to help him set down roots, record a memory, an unmistakable memento that he had been there. Lance got homesick, but he also found adventure and excitement in the new and unfamiliar, while Cal could get all the excitement he had ever wanted without moving from his computer. Cal had never dreamed of going to the stars, only understanding them.

            There was a smattering of fiction in one corner as well – a copy of _War and Peace_ he had ploughed through the summer before college, a dog-eared _El reino de este mundo_ , an English translation of _Metamorphosis_ , a very battered Spanish translation of _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea_ , Borges’s _Ficciones_ , Louisa’s old copy of _Arcadia_ , and something called _La isla de los amores infinitos_. Cal read for enjoyment the way he did everything else in life: methodically and thoughtfully, with no time for anything too frivolous. Lance rolled his eyes at the bookshelf. Of course Cal wouldn’t have anything published within the last fifty years when there were hundreds of years of classics he could be reading. He plucked _La isla_ off the shelf, since it looked the least intimidating, and flipped absently through it.

            “Do you think there are things in the universe that science can’t explain?” he asked. He heard Cal’s typing pause behind him and craned his head over his shoulder. Cal’s forehead was furrowed as he stared hard at Lance.

            “I think it is the task of scientists to adjust our theories and hypotheses whenever we encounter apparently inexplicable phenomena in order to reflect the new data and try to understand how it alters our understanding of the laws of the universe.”

            “Right, sure,” Lance said, pulling himself up to sit cross-legged. “But what about this kind of stuff?” he tapped the book. “You read these impossible stories, so you must think the idea of something that couldn’t really happen is at least interesting.” Cal shrugged and returned to typing.

            “Sometimes entertainment is just entertainment. And sometimes it’s fun to spend a weekend trying to rewrite the laws of physics for an imaginary world in which those things _would_ be possible.” Lance fell back onto the air mattress, covering his face with the book.

            “Oh my _God_ , Cal, you need to get a life,” he said into the pages.

            “Don’t spit on my books.”

            “Why is my brother the worst sort of nerd ever?”

            “Your family love is touching.” Lance heard feet padding across the room towards him, and a moment later something heavy dropped onto Lance’s stomach.

            “Oof – what–?” He pulled the book off of his face, and then eagerly snatched the object and sat back up. “Headphones!” he cried gleefully. Cal picked up _La isla_ and set it back on the shelf.

            “I thought you might want those. They should be set up with your music. They’re an older pair, but they still work fine.”

            “Thanks, Cal. I’ve been missing these. You have any idea what it’s like trying to sleep in a hospital bed with nurses walking by in the hallway all night long?”

            “I do, actually. My appendix burst when I was ten, remember?” Lance rolled his eyes and ignored him, pulling the headphones over his ears. He tapped the side of the right ear with two fingers, bringing up a holographic screen in front of him displaying his music. He swiped through his options, grinning, fingers hovering over one artist and then another as he tried to decide. Cal leaned over and lifted one side of the headphones off his ear.

            “I’ll leave you to your music, but listen, Lance – whatever happened to you, it wasn’t mystical or inexplicable. You didn’t just drop off the face of the Earth. We’ll figure it out – the police will find an explanation, or you’ll get your memory back, or Pidge or Hunk will turn up and fill you in. If you want to talk about it, then let’s talk, but no dancing around the topic, alright?” Lance’s fingers were still, unmoving over the holo-screen.

            “Alright,” he said quietly. Cal, satisfied, placed the headphones back over Lance’s ear and returned to his computer. Lance pressed his song choice and tapped the headphones again to make the screen vanish. He lay back, dropping an arm over his eyes, and let the thrumming of cello strings lull him into calm.

 

*

 

            He dreamt that he was flying.

            He dreamt that a touch of his finger and a twist of his wrist could send him swirling through space, past galaxies, through nebulas, or swing him around the edge of a black hole. He was suspended in starlight and darkness. He was weightless. He was ecstasy. The universe glittered into infinity around him.

            He dreamt that he was falling.

            The soft white glow of the stars crackled and sparked and turned purple and black around him, and suddenly he wasn’t weightless anymore. The world pulled him down, crashing, tumbling through blaring sirens and red alarms flashing in his eyes. He fell through water, where long shadowy creatures with unnaturally shaped heads curled around him. He fell through tunnels of rock that shook and threatened to collapse, where a hundred eyes watched him from the crevices. He fell through the air, buffeted and bruised by explosions that seemed to shake him to his bones.

            He dreamt that he was dying.

            He was sitting on a cold, hard floor, leaning against a platform, the angles of his suit’s armor pressing uncomfortably into his armpits and his neck. He breathed slowly and shallowly, every movement draining. The world felt dark and fuzzy, the sound of muffled pounding from somewhere behind him sliding in and out of his consciousness. A shadowy figure stood above him. “Lance,” it said, offering a gloved hand. Half on instinct, he reached out and took it, managing to sit forward. “Are you okay?” the figure asked urgently, kneeling down next to him.

            “We did it,” Lance said, the words struggling through his short breath. He looked up. “We are a good team.” The figure’s face swam into focus. It was Keith.

            Lance came awake abruptly and entirely, wide eyes staring up at Cal’s cracked apartment ceiling. The headphones were still nestled against his head, the sheet tucked under his left elbow. His shirt felt sweaty. He tapped the left headphone, shutting off the soft piano music, but otherwise lay still.

            “Why was I dreaming about…?” he mumbled. Keith’s face was as clear as day in his mind, long bangs falling over dark blue eyes set into pale skin and sharp angles. It was a face he knew well from his pilot classes. Always ahead of everyone, always glaring at you in the hallway, always unmoved by any attempt at conversation except to deliver a sharp retort. Keith fucking Kogane, the Garrison’s prodigal son. Lance ran a hand over his face.

            He pulled the headphones off, letting in a rush of sound. A clock ticked from the kitchen, Cal’s soft snores were just audible through his bedroom door, and out the window, the quiet roar of cars and motorcycles rose and fell as they sped by. He breathed through his mouth, quietly counting in and out, as he tried to slow the pounding of his heart against his ribs. The apartment was dark and calm, suspended in an eerily peaceful timeless night. Nothing was out of place, except that Keith’s face still danced before his eyes, unnerving in its clarity. That one image felt more vivid than the entire surreal week he’d spent in the hospital. He covered his face with his hands, trying to block it out, but it was fixed into his mind, solid and detailed and immediate.

            He snapped the headphones back over his ears, silencing the outside world, pressed play again, and wiggled the sheet into a more comfortable position. Closing his eyes, he tried to slip back into sleep, but still Keith’s face hovered on the edge of his consciousness, terrifyingly clear.

            It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like a memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was that last scene strictly speaking necessary to the plot? No. No, not really. Do I have a bunch of terrible enablers on tumblr encouraging me to do it anyway? [Oh boy you betcha.](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/156242742032/im-writing-a-fic-where-lance-loses-part-of-his)
> 
> I really hope this chapter wasn't too slow :/ I promise there's just one more chapter of build-up before we really get into the meat of this fic and Lance starts discovering things.
> 
> Also: WOW I am overwhelmed by what a huge and positive response this has gotten so far!!!!! Thank you all so, so much - especially to everyone who commented or reblogged the link, I love you guys so much. Please leave a comment or come talk to me on tumblr [@thatgirlonstage](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/) if you would like!! <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quantum mechanics joke courtesy of my friend who actually knows physics things. I have no idea what it means.

            Detective Hopkins clicked his pen over and over, the slight resistance and release satisfying under his finger. His eyes glazed over as he stared at the screen in front of him, his brain grinding to a halt knowing he had memorized every single word. At approximately 19:30, Pidge left the dining hall, presumably returning to his room. Approximately 21:15, Garrison student Lauren Pike saw Lance and Hunk leaving the student lounge shortly before the lights out at 21:30. Those were the last times anyone saw them. Approximately 22:00, something crashed in the desert less than a mile from the Garrison, prompting a lockdown of the facility in case it was some kind of attack. The object was later identified as a meteor. Approximately, 22:10, a scan to ensure the lockdown was in place and all students were in their dorms was interrupted by the discovery that Lance and Hunk were missing. Three minutes later, they found Pidge was missing as well. At 22:41, a search of the entire facility concluded all three students were nowhere on the premises. That was the last thing anyone knew about them until Lance Sanchez appeared in the desert four months later like he materialized out of thin air.

            “Not struck by divine inspiration yet?” He looked up to see his partner, four feet eleven inches of good-natured sarcasm and round cheeks named Cho. “Here. Coffee.” Hopkins took the thin Styrofoam cup gratefully, grimacing at the cheap bitterness.

            “Did we hear back from that specialist we brought in to look at the fibers in Lance’s clothing?” he asked, swiping back to his computer home screen. He couldn’t stand to keep looking at the mockingly thin case file. Cho took a gulp from her own coffee before answering.

            “Yeah, but he wasn’t any help. He couldn’t identify them either. Muttered something about experimental synthetic fabrics and high-tailed it out of there.” Hopkins groaned.

            “So we’re still at zero.”

            “Oh, I don’t know. I think we could investigate the illegal fabric experimentation angle. I hear Batman’s been looking into it.” She shot him a tired smile, which he did not return.

            “I’m willing to try anything. If Lance is still alive it raises the odds that Hunk and Pidge are as well. There has to be _some_ kind of clue—”

            “Detective Hopkins?” The brand new nervous, mousy secretary was standing five feet away from the desk, twisting her fingers nervously. Hopkins drew a blank trying to recall her name. He squinted, trying to make out her nametag, but stopped when he realized it probably looked like he was ogling her chest.

            “Yes?” he asked, taking another swallow of coffee to cover his confusion.

            “Lance Sanchez is out in the lobby. He said he wanted to talk to you?” Hopkins and Cho glanced at each other, and Hopkins shoved his coffee aside.

            “Yes, yes – please, send him in right away,” he said. The secretary bobbed her head and darted away, weaving expertly through the morning rush. Hopkins sat back in his chair, frowning. “I wonder why he didn’t just call?” he asked. Cho shrugged.

            “The thrill of meeting a crowd of tired policemen?” she asked.

            Lance, when Hopkins caught sight of him picking his way in between desks towards them, did not look especially thrilled. He kept his eyes trained on his feet and his body quivered with nerves. Shadows under his eyes belied a sleepless night, even though he did still look significantly healthier than he had in the hospital, pale as the bed sheets with worry for his friends and scratching at the IVs running through his arm like they were handcuffs holding him down. Hopkins jumped up and greeted him with as warm a smile as he could muster, fighting back the sluggishness of his own too-long unproductive nights, and led him gently to a more private room – the nice one, where he sat Lance down on a worn blue sofa with his own Styrofoam cup of coffee on the low wooden table in front of him, the one where they took frightened or devastated family members, ignoring Cho’s raised eyebrow as he did so. However bizarre the circumstances of his disappearance and reappearance were, Hopkins still felt sure this uncertain seventeen-year-old kid was far more likely to be the victim of a crime than the perpetrator of one. There was no reason to stick him in an interrogation room – or at least, not yet. He sat back and waited for Lance to talk.

            He took his time about it, warming his hands on the cup, making a few offhand, distracted comments about the weather and the sofa’s upholstery as he struggled to get to the point. Hopkins kept his responses short, trying not to start a meaningless conversation. Finally, he decided on a gentle prompt.

            “Did you remember something?” he asked. Lance rubbed the lip of the Styrofoam cup between his fingers.

            “Yes?” he said finally. “Maybe. I’m not sure.” Hopkins sat forward, his heart pounding. Right now, he’d take anything. Any lead might be enough to crack the case open – or at least give him something, anything to do besides read over the near-empty case file another dozen times. Lance bit his lip, and then continued. “Do you… There was a student at the Garrison named Keith Kogane. He got kicked out about seven months ago – or, well, I guess that’s eleven months ago now. Do you… know where he went?” Hopkins blinked, frowning. The name rang a dim bell, but he couldn’t remember why.

            “Why is Keith Kogane important?” he asked. Lance ran his hands in opposite directions along the side of the cup, spinning it slowly.

            “I don’t know,” he said. “I remember his face, that’s pretty much it. Oh, and I think I was hurt? I was hurt and he was there.” Hopkins scribbled Keith’s name onto his notepad and clicked his pen slowly, choosing his words carefully.

            “Do you remember _how_ you were hurt?” he asked. “Was something cut open, or were you bruised, or was there a bone broken…?” Lance shrugged, a slightly oversized dark brown jacket shifting and folding on his shoulders. It must be brand new – a forgotten tag hung out of the bottom with a bold red 25% off scrawled across it in Sharpie.

            “Not really. I don’t… I don’t think I was bleeding or anything, but I could be wrong. I just remember everything hurt a lot. It was tough to breathe and I kept, uh, I kept losing consciousness.” He scribbled these details into his notebook surrounded by question marks. The doctor had said there was no sign of any recent traumatic injuries, but Lance’s description sounded like the poor kid had been beaten within an inch of his life.

            “Okay,” he said. Lance still wouldn’t quite look at him, gaze trained on the coffee. Hopkins’ eyes raked over him, as if there might be answers written on his skin if he could just catch the light at the right angle to see them. “So, Keith. Was he the one hurting you, or—?”

            “No!” Lance’s head shot up, his eyes wide, and his hands tightened until they almost crumpled the cup. He blinked, seeming surprised by his own vehemence. “I… I mean… No, I’m pretty certain he didn’t hurt me. I wasn’t afraid of him or anything. He was helping me, I think? And I was… When I saw him I felt… relieved? I don’t know why.” He paused, made a face, and let out a short humorless laugh. “I don’t know why he would help me. We were…” He trailed off, glancing up at Hopkins, and started again. “We didn’t exactly get along.” Hopkins asked a few more questions about how well Lance and Keith knew each other at the Garrison, whether Keith knew Hunk and Pidge as well (Pidge had arrived immediately after Keith left, that was at least marginally interesting), but he had a sneaking suspicion that this would get him nowhere. Finally, it became clear he’d wrung all he could out of this brief flash of memory, and he let the conversation slip into some mundane comments on his brother’s apartment while Lance finished his coffee, and pointing out the tag left hanging out of his jacket, which he ripped off in embarrassment. Hopkins showed him out of the station, Cho watching him intently from her desk, and then strode back in with determination.

            His hands flew across his keyboard before he’d even sat all the way back down. He whistled as the long list of results for “Keith Kogane” scrolled past. An altercation with a Garrison lieutenant who subsequently dropped the charges, that was the most recent item, presumably what had gotten him kicked out – Hopkins would come back to that. Before he even got to that, though, there was a string of missing persons reports, every single one from different foster parents. Fifteen-year-old runaway, Fourteen-year-old runaway, Thirteen-year-old runaway… Ten-year-old runaway… _Seven_ -year-old runaway… A slew of shoplifting and petty theft accusations accompanied the reports, settled with progressively heftier fines. He could see a pattern: run away, get caught shoplifting food, foster parents throw him back to the system rather than deal with a juvenile delinquent, rinse and repeat. It was a depressing cycle.

            “Isn’t that the kid that broke some guy’s arm but he refused to press charges for it?” Hopkins jumped, finding Cho peering over his shoulder. She glanced over at him, their heads nearly level when he was sitting. “What’s he got to do with this?”

            “Lance brought him up,” he said distractedly, scrolling back up the page to the assault accusation. “Do you remember the case?” he asked. Cho chewed her lip.

            “Just remember Sanders complaining about it. Said she didn’t understand how the kid had even gotten into the Garrison in the first place, with his record. And then she didn’t understand why the Garrison insisted they handle it internally, since it landed somebody in the hospital.”

            “Well, according to Lance, they kicked him out,” Hopkins said. The file on Keith’s most recent offense was sparse – it seemed there had been some confusion when a Lieutenant Meyers had landed in the hospital with a broken arm, an impressive black eye, and several more bruises turning him blue and purple. The police had been called in to investigate an assault, except when they got there Lieutenant Meyers insisted he hadn’t wanted the police involved and said that the Garrison would handle its own student. He frowned, reading over the account again. The people at Galaxy Garrison were reticent, he knew that, but something about this particular account sounded especially stilted and confused. “Cho, can you see if we can talk to Lieutenant Meyers?” She sighed and rolled her eyes.

            “Oh yes, I’ll ask my ever-charming ‘town liaison.’ He’s always so helpful.” Hopkins ignored the sarcasm, pulling up the number for the local foster system.

            “Good. I’m going to track down Keith Kogane and see what he knows.”

 

*

 

            Lance’s feet took him wandering away from the police station, eyes fixed on the cracked and discolored pavement, scraggly desert-hardened weeds clawing their way up through the concrete. Motorcycles and cars trundled down the streets, interrupted at each intersection by a block of square-suited pedestrians sweating through their collars. He drifted away from the entrance to the bullet train which would take him back across town to Cal’s apartment, instead letting the wave of people guide him down the dusty streets to sleek and glassy skyscrapers with demure plaques beside their doors proclaiming the list of offices inside. The square-suited pedestrians leaked into these doors, gulping down coffee and fumbling briefcases as they went, until Lance found himself nearly alone on the streets again. He let his mind go blank, enjoying the cool morning breeze and the rhythm of his feet against the sidewalk. He only looked up when a gust of wind blew sand into his eyes.

            Rubbing the sand away with his jacket sleeve, he found himself in Ridgeline Park, a thin strip of public space off the end of the business district. A few tough, gnarled trees stubbornly spread shade at intervals alongside benches where businessmen took their lunch breaks on cooler days, but a few feet away the shorn edge of a hill dropped off and left the park gaping at open sky, looking out over the town and to the desert beyond it. The Garrison was just barely visible as a dot on the horizon. His hair stirred in the breeze that gusted up and over the edge of the cliff, swirling sand and dust across the ground, dancing around the bottoms of the trees and piling up against bench legs. He breathed deeply. The air was fresh and clean here, and smelled of creosote.

            He found his eyes drawn to the desert, running along the craggy lines of the mountains as if he could read the answers to his questions on the horizon. He felt an odd tug in his chest, as if getting closer was somehow the answer. The truth was buried out there somewhere, in his long blown-away footprints, in the hidden and sandblasted marks of human passage through that empty space.

            “Remarkable view, isn’t it?” Lance jumped and turned to find a man wrapped in a quilted blanket, his hair spiked in every direction in a bad case of bed head, packing away a telescope.

            “Um, oh yeah,” he said, startled, blinking out over the brick and concrete mass of the town. The sky arced blue and white above them. “It’s gorgeous.” The telescope man covered his mouth as he yawned.

            “I fell asleep out here last night. I’m surprised no one came and kicked me out, that’s happened oh, hmm, five times before? The local police aren’t particularly fond of me, ha. ’Course you can’t be _sure_ it was the police – there was this one time, you know, where it was some man that I have never seen before or since, and one of the numbers on his badge was scratched so it was illegible. He was probably a dark operative from the government out making sure no one saw the secret training exercises they do out there.” He jerked a wide ring-bound thumb at the Garrison. Lance felt his stomach sink into his feet. Just his luck, running into some wacked-out conspiracy theorist alone in a park.

            “Were you stargazing?” he asked hopefully, indicating the telescope. He could talk stars. The man burst out laughing.

            “Oh no,” he said. “ _Aliens_ , man. I’m out here looking for _aliens_.” Well, he should have seen that one coming.

            “Oh,” he said, as neutrally as possible. He felt unreasonably jumpy. This was just one dude, and even if he was a little weird, he didn’t seem like he was about to attack or anything. So why was Lance’s stomach jittery with nerves? Why did he keep feeling a need to glance around as if to make sure no one was listening? The man was squinting at him through his thick glasses, when suddenly recognition dawned on his face.

            “Hey, _I_ know you!” he said, eyes and mouth wide. Lance took half a step backward. “ _You’re_ Lance Sanchez, one of the three guys that disappeared into the desert four months ago! And then mysteriously turned back up two weeks ago!”

            “Oh, uh… yeah, yup, that’s me,” Lance said, backpedaling for real now. Why had he walked out here? This had been a stupid mistake. The telescope man advanced on him, eye glinting with fascinated zeal.

            “Why aren’t they saying anything on the news about what happened to you? Where did you go? Were you kidnapped? What happened to your friends?” Lance’s jaw felt painfully tight, his teeth grinding against each other. “Who’s Pidge Gunderson? Was the Garrison involved in your disappearance? Did you and your two friends all disappear to the same place or were you alone? Are the police trying to cover something up? Are your friends still alive?”

            “I don’t know!” he exploded. The man, startled, stopped moving forward. Lance’s fists were clenched by his side, his arms shaking with tension. “I don’t remember what happened to me! Stop asking me these questions, it’s none of your fucking business!” The man blinked twice, and then his eyes got, somehow, even wider.

            “You don’t _remember_?” he said breathlessly. “They erased your memory!”

            “What?”

            “The _aliens_!” he said. “The aliens who abducted you!” Lance’s fingers twitched with the urge to throttle this guy.

            “You’re insane, and that’s not funny,” he said. “My friends are _missing_.” The man shook his head, scrambling in his bag for a notebook that he yanked out triumphantly.

            “No no no, you don’t understand!” he said. “It’s not _like_ the other times – I have evidence. _Proof_!” He flipped through the battered and dog-eared notebook before shoving a page with a blurry, dark picture paperclipped to it into Lance’s face. “ _Look_!” he said. Lance squinted uncertainly at the picture. A fiery blur streaked down a diagonal angle on it, but the resolution was too low to make out what it was supposed to be. The man must have seen the skepticism in his face, because he sighed and tapped the photo with a broad, pasty finger. “I took this picture the night you and your friends disappeared,” he said. “Something fell from the sky that night.”

            “Yeah, a meteor. I know,” Lance said. The man shook his head vehemently.

            “That’s what the _Garrison_ says, but apart from them no one really knows. If it really was just a meteor, why were they on lockdown _all night_? Even the police couldn’t get in until three hours after they discovered you were gone. And why did they take the meteor away before anyone else could get to it? I’m telling you it doesn’t add up!” He waved the picture again, and then sighed at the look of skepticism and disbelief on Lance’s face. “Fine,” he said. “You want more evidence? There was an explosion in the desert – well _after_ the UFO crashed. I couldn’t see it, the mountains were in the way, but I heard it. And then the next day, this happened.” He flipped the page. There was an oddly bright blue streak across the mountainous backdrop. Lance just stared at the man, who snapped his notebook shut in annoyance. “It was moving too fast to see!” he grumbled. “But it was some kind of ship, I’m _sure_ of it. It flew into space!”

            “Right,” Lance said. “Are you done?” The man shoved the notebook back into his bag and then stuck one of his wide, stubby fingers in Lance’s face.

            “You were abducted, kid, and the Garrison knows about it. Hell, maybe they even served you up to the aliens. Now they’ve erased your memory and let you go, but who knows for how long? I’d watch out if I were you.” Lance pulled back.

            “Get away from me,” he said. The man turned away, muttering to himself as he packed up his telescope, and Lance took the opportunity to run. There was an entrance to the bullet train just a block away, and he practically fell down the stairs getting inside. He swiped his ticket across the turnstile and jumped on board the train heading back uptown, the doors sliding shut so close behind him they almost caught his jacket. He collapsed, too-long arms and legs folding up at odd angles to fit into the smooth plastic seat, and willed his heart to slow.

            “He’s crazy,” he muttered to himself. “He’s some wacko who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” So why had that first picture burned itself into Lance’s mind? It shimmered before his eyes, blurry and unfocused, but he could almost picture it – something fiery streaking across the nighttime sky. A meteor, he told himself. He might have seen the meteor that fell. That was plausible.

            Yet for some reason he didn’t quite believe it.

 

*

 

            Lance eased the door open, slipping noiselessly back into the apartment, and just about suffered a heart attack when Cal’s voice boomed, “ _So where were you this morning_?” His hand slipped on the knob and the door slammed shut behind him with a BANG. He jumped, startled a second time by the noise, and his other hand came up to clutch his chest.

            “What was that, Cal, don’t scare me like that!” he panted. Cal, dressed in pale grey sweatpants and an exercise shirt that clung too closely to his broad shoulders, crossed his arms.

            “Oh, so you speak English before noon, now.”

            “What?” Lance asked, kicking off his shoes and making his way over to the kitchen counter, grabbing a bag of sandwich bread and dropping a piece in the toaster. Cal, standing by the coffee machine, watched him closely.

            “You used to always kick up such a fuss about practicing English too early in the morning. But here it is, barely 10AM and not even thinking about it.”

            “I did not do that.” Lance rolled his eyes. He edged past Cal and yanked the fridge door open, searching for butter.

            “Louisa will back me up on this one – and Mamá and Papá will too.”

            “You are so exaggerating. That happened _one time_ when I’d slept for like three hours.”

            “Oh, that is a blatant lie,” Cal said, retrieving a now-full coffee mug. He pulled a box full of artificial sugar packets from the corner of a cupboard and upended one over his coffee. Lance didn’t give him the dignity of a response, just snagged his toast between two fingers and dropped it onto a plate. “But seriously – where did you go? When I got up and you weren’t here I was convinced Mamá was about to bust through the door and see that I’d lost you. The police would _really_ never find my body.”

            “Just for a walk,” Lance said, trying to mash up the cold butter enough to spread it. “I didn’t sleep super well and I wanted fresh air.” He cringed a bit – that sounded painfully rehearsed. “Sorry I didn’t leave a note. I forgot you wake up freakishly early, and then I lost track of time.”

            “7:30 isn’t freakish,” Cal muttered, and took a gulp of coffee. Lance set into his toast with too much enthusiasm, avoiding Cal’s eyes. “You know I meant to ask you – speaking of walking – where were you planning to go in that desert anyway?” Lance swallowed and matched Cal’s glare.

            “I don’t remember, Cal, why would you—?”

            He waved a hand dismissively. “I know you don’t remember where you really went, but you know you were planning to sneak out, right? Except there’s nothing within walking distance of the Garrison, and the bullet only runs during school hours. So what were you _planning_ to do?”

            “Oh.” Lance shrugged. “Um… ‘borrow’ Louisa’s car. Pidge could hack anything, I’m sure he could have gotten us past the front gate.” The permanent frown between Cal’s eyebrows etched itself deeper.

            “But Louisa’s car wasn’t missing,” he said. Lance paused, his finger caught chasing crumbs around his plate, and tried to read Cal’s expression.

            “So…?”

            “And it definitely wasn’t returned later, because the Garrison was in lockdown when they found out you were missing, and then it was swarming with police monitoring everyone going in and out.” Comprehension dawned on Lance’s face.

            “So whatever happened, it started before we even _left_ the Garrison,” he said. “Either… either something happened to us while we were still inside, or something changed our plans before we got out.” Lance chewed his lip, his finger pressed against a pile of breadcrumbs caught against the edge of his plate. “I don’t know who or what could have gotten into the Garrison without them knowing about it, especially after hours. But… what could possibly make us think running into the desert was a smart idea?” he muttered. He closed his eyes, willing any piece, any scrap of memory to surface, trying to push even just a few seconds later than he’d remembered before. The telescope man’s face floated behind his eyelids, taunting him with blurry pictures and crackpot theories that made his heart pound with inexplicable fear. “Hey, Cal? I said we saw Pidge going to the _roof_ , right?” Cal nodded, watching him. “Well… I don’t want to sound crazy but… The roof has a good view of the desert and… it sounds like that meteor crashed within walking distance…” Cal frowned.

            “You think you walked into the desert because of a meteor? After the Garrison was put on lockdown?”

            “Maybe… we thought it wasn’t a meteor?” he said quietly. Cal was silent. Lance felt himself flush. “I sound crazy, I know! I’m just… I don’t know what happened, and I feel like I’m _going_ crazy trying to come up with an explanation, and…”

            “I was more concerned it was an inside job,” Cal said. Lance stared at him.

            “Inside…?”

            “If there’s no reason for you to have left the Garrison without Louisa’s car, and there’s no way some random stranger could have gotten into the Garrison and… carried you off, or whatever…”

            “So, what, so you think one of the teachers at the Garrison – somebody from the military – what, chloroformed three random students and dragged us off, to, to, what? It _makes no sense_.” Lance banged his head against his hands in frustration. “Why us, anyway? What could possibly be special about me and Hunk and Pidge? I mean, Pidge I could maybe get, he’s like a technical prodigy, maybe somebody wants him to build their supervillain weapon or whatever. Hunk’s an engineer, he could probably help with that. So what does that make me, collateral damage? I saw something I shouldn’t have? Is that why I’m ali– here? Did my own kidnapper not want me, or—?”

            “ _Lance_.” He cut off sharply, head jolting up to look at Cal, who was suddenly directly beside him. “Breathe,” he ordered, and Lance took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t know anything, okay? I’m just… I’m trying to help you think through what might have happened.” Lance jerked away, dropping his plate in the sink with a clatter.

            “Well when you come up with the most logical scenario, let me know,” he said. “I know that’s your area of expertise.” He marched over to the door and pulled his shoes back on. “I have an appointment with that therapist person soon, I should go.”

            “It’s not for another three hours,” Cal said.

            “Yeah, well, I’m not sure where I’m going, so I’d rather just get there early.”

            “Didn’t you and Mamá go meet him on Thurs—?”

            “See you later, Cal.” Lance banged the door shut behind him.

 

*

 

            Lance stood on the platform, shielded from the wind and dust by curved transparent plastic that offered a view of the open desert, empty but for the train track stretching away from the station and a road running alongside it. Smooth benches stood discreetly at intervals along the platform, offering places to wait. A digital display hung from the ceiling, counting down the minutes until the next train arrived. A single door led off the platform, back underground to the citywide bullet.

            He pressed a hand against the plastic wall and leaned his forehead up against it, staring out into the desert. He had come here without thinking, without planning, but when the first train had pulled into the station, he had stopped short of climbing aboard. Three more trains had come through since then. Occasionally someone in a Garrison uniform joined him on the platform or exited a train, but there had been no one he recognized so far, and no one paid him any attention.

            He was watching the desert. He was mesmerized. He felt like he could stand here all day, eyes following the clouds of dust and sand that swirled into the air, and then spiraled back to Earth. The crags of the mountains poked the sky in a comfortingly familiar pattern. He felt his whirling thoughts slip away, instead just drinking in the landscape, and breathed softly, his breath fogging the plastic wall just slightly. Staring out into the desert, he felt as if he could just walk out and find his memories, as if he’d dropped them while he was walking.

            He sighed, turning to the door that led back underground. He was going to miss his therapist appointment. And he needed to go back and apologize to Cal.

 

*

 

            “I miss flying.” Cal glanced up from his computer. Lance was lying sideways across his mattress, his feet and head hanging off it, the headphones abandoned beside him, _La isla_ bookmarked less than twenty pages in and left on the sofa next to the air mattress. He tapped his heels restlessly against the floor. “I dream about flying. Maybe it would help, I dunno. But I’ve been going stir-crazy this past week.”

            “I’ve noticed,” Cal said dryly. He hadn’t tried to bring up Lance’s memory since their first discussion about the Garrison, but Lance’s frustration with his therapist and total lack of progress in remembering anything had boiled over more than once into snapping at Cal. He took Lance’s apologies as he always had: with a shrug and a nod and a change of subject.

            “I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have schoolwork to do,” Lance said, trying to pick patterns from the cracks in the ceiling. “I’m not used to being so… unoccupied.”

            “You go out for hours every day, what do you do?” Lance shrugged, shoulders pulling at his bed sheet.

            “Just walk. Try to remember,” he said vaguely. He hadn’t told Cal about his odd, unwilling obsession with the desert and he didn’t plan to. And it wasn’t really even a lie – it just omitted the part where he was usually walking on the very edge of town, staring out across the empty expanse where they’d found him. Cal fidgeted with his calculator.

            “I have to go back to school tomorrow,” he said. “The dean’s going to be pissed at me if I take more time off of class.”

            “Okay,” Lance said, on the verge of picking out a rabbit in the ceiling cracks, squinting for the outline of its tail.

            “I spend pretty much the whole day there when I’m in class, so I won’t be around the apartment much except at night and on weekends.” Lance pushed himself up onto his elbow and sent a disparaging look at his older brother.

            “Cal. I’m seventeen. I’ll be fine. You don’t need to babysit me.” Cal shrugged.

            “Just letting you know.”

            “Cool,” Lance replied, lying back down. The rabbit had vanished back into the maze of cracks. He sighed. “Hey Cal?”

            “Mm?”

            “You ever rented one of those hoverbikes?” Cal put his calculator down.

            “You go rent one of those things and Mamá will kill both of us,” he said. Lance grinned sheepishly.

            “Not if she doesn’t know about it,” he said. He craned his neck back to get an upside down view of Cal’s glare. “C’mon, man, I’m _so bored_. And it’s as close as I can get to flying without going back to the Garrison.”

            “So go back to the Garrison. Or go home and go to our old simulator arcade.” Lance was quiet. He hadn’t heard anything from Detective Hopkins, and no more memories had surfaced out of his dreams. Still, the sense that he needed to stay hadn’t faded. If anything, it had only seemed to grow, to a point of urgency that was almost painful.

            “Not yet,” he said quietly. Cal sighed, swiveling back to his computer.

            “Well, like I said, I’ll be gone all day long,” he said, enunciating those last three words very clearly. “And I hear that place on Green Street has good rates,” he muttered as an afterthought. Lance grinned widely at his back.

            “Calixto Sanchez, what do you get up to on the weekends? Louisa and I are shut up in the Garrison running extra flight simulations… Mamá and Papá are far away in Cuba… You’re right here in town, all by yourself…” Cal held up a finger, not looking at him.

            “Don’t push your luck,” he growled. “Take a quick spin around the edge of town and nothing else, you hear?”

            “Loud and clear,” Lance said. “Hey, Cal, did you know, in Hilbert space no one can hear you scream.”

            “If you break your arm, physics jokes are not going to save you. Besides, you know I’ve heard that one already.” Lance took the hint and shut his mouth, pulling his headphones on, but he saw the slight smile on Cal’s face.

 

*

 

            Lance had been on a hoverbike only a few times before, but they were simple enough to ride once you got your balance right. Within the hour, he was zipping around the open practice track, running impromptu races with some of the other thrill seekers until one or the other of them decided they needed a break to scrub the dust from their faces. He parked the bike at the edge of the track, staring out into the desert and breathing in the landscape. With the adrenaline rushing pleasantly through his veins and the sun beating down, he could almost imagine nothing was wrong.

            Nothing had worked. His memory wasn’t coming back like Dr. Young had said it should, the therapist’s suggestions weren’t helping, the police hadn’t come back with any leads, he still had no idea what his flash of Keith Kogane’s face meant, and Hunk and Pidge were still out there somewhere, missing. The only thing he had was this unexplained pull back to the desert.

            If he had stopped to think about it, he would never have gone. The idea was stupid bordering on insane. But it was the only idea he had, and he was beginning to feel like he would explode if he sat still any longer. Every moment of inaction cracked his skin, pushing out and out until he had to move, to change, to make a decision. The bikes were solar charged. It would work all day and several hours into the night. He’d brought a massive bottle of water and was slathered in sunscreen. He had nothing to lose.

            Lance tightened the strap of his helmet and took off into the desert.

            He rode without considering his destination. The bikes came with a built-in GPS system, so he’d have no trouble finding his way back to town. He zoomed across rock and sand, and found himself on the road to the Garrison, the bullet zipping past him on the parallel track. He veered off before he reached the end of the road, moving off into the open expanse of the land, the town eventually beginning to disappear behind him as mountains rose to block his view. He slowed as he approached a small but noticeable crater, the ground broken and uneven. Where the meteor had struck? He shook his head and continued, revving the bike, pushing it faster. His heart was thudding against his chest, a memory almost present in the back of his mind. He knew that a rock was looming up ahead, knew there was an open space this way. He yanked the bike to a halt as he hit the precipice of a cliff. He stared down, perplexed.

            “I am going to die if I go over the edge of this cliff,” he said to the ground. “Well, I guess conceivably, if you could increase the lift on the hoverbike right before you hit the bottom that could cushion your fall enough to make it, but it would be insane to try.” Instead, he carefully picked his roundabout way down a narrow ledge, at one point even getting off the bike and pulling it behind him to edge along. By the time he hit the bottom, he had lost some of the urgency and bite of purpose that had sent him out into the desert in the first place. He glanced around, absently brushing dust from his clothes, disoriented and slightly embarrassed as the reality of what he was doing started to catch up with him. He took a gulp of water, and as he set it back in the bike, another half-remembered landmark caught his eye. Before he could lose it, he was back on the bike and zooming off again, chasing will-o’-the-wisp feelings through the rocky landscape.

            He found himself back closer to the town again, though still far enough away that he could just barely make out the outline of skyscrapers in the distance. There were no roads, and the ground shifted from rock to sand, small dunes growing and vanishing beneath the wind. Yet in the middle of this empty landscape, a wooden hut appeared on the horizon. A tree stood beside it, a shock of green in a world of brown and yellow. Lance slowed as he approached it. The hut was small, probably barely more than a couple or three rooms, with a smaller concrete attachment on one side. Next to it stood a red and white hoverbike, though a much bigger and fancier model than Lance’s cheap rental. The broken remains of a fence a few feet away indicated some past history of a garden now long gone.

            He slowed to a stop, parking the bike and climbing off it. He walked slowly up to the hut. Sand had collected on top of the hoverbike, on the porch, and in front of the doors, blown there by the wind and not cleared away by human passage.

            “So no one’s been here for a while,” Lance mused quietly. Still, he paused by the foot of the stairs, and stepped up slowly, the boards creaking under his feet. Every step he took felt weighted, every squeak of wood and whistle of the wind made him pause, waiting for someone to burst out and challenge him. He made it onto the porch, knocked on the door, and waited, but only the sound of the desert wind greeted him. “Guess no one’s home,” he said. His heart thudded against his chest so fast it was painful. He took a deep breath, reached down, grasped the doorknob, and twisted it. The door swung open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Plot Holes Become Plot Points: The Chapter
> 
> seriously do you know how long I spent agonizing over how the hell Lance was planning to take Hunk and Pidge out on the town when the Garrison is IN THE MIDDLE OF A DESERT WITH NO OTHER SIGNS OF LIFE NEARBY
> 
> Telescope man's name is Charles purely so that I can refer to him as Chuck the Conspiracy Schmuck. Poor guy.
> 
> Thank you for waiting for this chapter, and I'm sorry it's so choppy, but I didn't want to linger tooooooo long on Lance just being mopey and confused so ugh it's done, it's out there, and we're just gonna roll with it. BUT we've finally hit the actual summary of the fic, lol. Gee I wonder who has a hut in the middle of the desert, who would do that
> 
> Please leave a comment!! I love hearing what you guys think <3


	4. Chapter 4

            The first thing Lance saw was paper.

            There were reams of it scattered across the room, stacked high against the wall, books piled haphazardly in corners and toppling onto each other on shelves, posters covering the peeling wallpaper, rolled up maps and star charts shoved into cardboard boxes, newspaper clippings with headlines circled in red pen, colored Post-It notes stuck on everything, all of them scrawled over with the same messy, spiky handwriting.

            The second thing he noticed was the conspiracy board.

            A massive corkboard covered most of the wall to his right, beside a single narrow door that presumably led to the rest of the hut. Lance gaped at it: it looked like it had fallen out of every crime thriller ever, complete with color-coded string connecting the dots from dirty pencil sketches to photographs to a map that sat dead center, with a giant black circle around the words ENERGY SOURCE and several X’s marking out a triangle.

            The third thing he noticed was how much dust he had kicked up by opening the door, as he went into a coughing fit.

            When he had cleared his lungs and wiped the tears from his eyes, he took a few hesitant, stumbling steps closer to the conspiracy board. Pictures of lions dominated, some photographs of what looked like cave drawings, others messy sketches that had clearly been rubbed out over and over by an increasingly dirty eraser, creased and torn along the edges. For some reason, the sight of the lions made Lance’s heart jump into his throat, although he couldn’t recall ever seeing something like it before. Annotations in the same spiky handwriting covered them, but none of them made any sense. What did “NAs around?? WHO LIVED HERE?” have to do with what looked like a mathematical calculation? Why was there a yellow Post-It that just said, “changing art styles” with three arrows pointing to different photographs on it? Why was there a photograph of nothing but a cave entrance? Why was there also a world map with the constellations charted across it, showing where they were visible?

            “Does that guy with the telescope live here?” he wondered aloud, and then winced, wondering if he might have alerted anyone else in the house to his presence, but as much as he strained his ears, everything remained silent. “Only if he’s been sleeping in that park for a few months straight, judging by the dust,” he muttered to himself. He turned and surveyed the room.

            He didn’t think he’d ever seen so much paper in his life. If he thought Cal kept an impressive number of physical books even though digital copies were less than a quarter of the price, it was nothing compared to whatever the person who lived here had. They were piled everywhere: on the shelves against the back wall, on the desk and shelves on either side of the front door, underneath the wooden slab sitting on top of some concrete bricks that Lance thought was supposed to pass for a table (helping to hold it up, by the looks of it), even stuck on top of the tower of what looked like Garrison reject tech. Lance frowned, moving closer, and his eyes went wide. This _was_ Garrison reject tech. The two back-to-front G’s that made up their logo were pasted onto the corners, although at least one looked like it had been scratched off. “What the…?” he murmured. The Garrison was dedicated to keeping their technology scarily modern, so it wasn’t unusual for them to donate outdated but still perfectly serviceable technology to the electrojunk yards in the city where people could go scavenge them. Most people in the city probably owned a printer that had been thrown away by the Garrison at some point. This was different, though. For one thing, some of this was a lot more sophisticated than a printer – Lance thought he recognized a machine Hunk had told him could be adjusted to scan for, record, and convert almost any frequency to levels that could be heard by human ears – and he doubted it would get tossed in with the Garrison’s normal electrojunk. For another, some of it wasn’t just old, by technology standards it was _ancient_. The holoscreen projector looked like it was decades old, probably older than Lance himself, and had clearly been repaired and retrofitted over the years. He ran a hesitant finger along the top of the frequency scanner and it came away coated in dust.

            Rubbing his hand against his pants, he took a few slow steps over to the table. There was an empty water bottle and an open, empty black can that according to the label had once contained beans but now had nothing but some nasty congealed juice at the bottom of it sitting on top of a few sheets of paper. One of them had something written in all caps and red across it, and Lance carefully, with one finger, shoved the bean can aside to get a look. It said: DON’T FORGET – TOMORROW. There was a date written underneath and circled four times.

            Lance’s throat constricted and he wondered if he was going to start coughing again. He stared at the paper until he thought he might burn a hole right through it. The world seemed to tumble into chaos around him. He clenched his fists, trying to hold onto reality with brute force. He could hear his heart thundering in his ears.

            The date written on the sheet of the paper was the night Lance had gone missing.

            He didn’t know how long he stood there staring at this sheet of paper with its frighteningly coincidental date before he reached a shaking hand into his pocket and pulled out the new phone he’d finally bought. He was halfway through typing in Detective Hopkins’s contact before he paused.

            “What would I even say…?” he asked his phone. “Detective Hopkins” sat at the top of his screen, waiting to be pressed, an alert to the police two taps of a finger away, but instead he deleted the letters of his contact search one by one and slowly put the phone back into his pocket. “Not yet _,_ ” he muttered. “I need something more than a piece of paper if I’m going to explain why I’m out here at all. Plus, walking into this hut probably counts as breaking and entering, doesn’t it? Oh, shit, am I breaking the law?” He shifted from foot to foot, suddenly paranoid that Detective Hopkins was tailing him and was about to burst through the door and arrest him. Making a split-second decision, he walked over to the door on the right wall and twisted the knob.

            The door opened onto a sparsely furnished kitchen, boasting nothing more than a single cupboard and a square of counter space, a rickety old gas stove, a rusty metal sink, a mismatched set of two chairs and a table, and a squat little fridge that was making a frightening rattling sound as it ran. At the opposite end of the room another door was cracked open to a tiny square of a bathroom, and a ladder led up to some kind of attic. Lance, still slightly paranoid that the owner of the hut was going to appear in front of him and shoot him for trespassing, walked over to the fridge. Taking a deep breath, he placed his hand hesitantly on the handle, and yanked it open. He slammed it shut again as fast as possible, his free hand coming up to cover his nose. Unless the mold in there mutated and came to life and tried to kill him, he was happy to let whatever remnants of food there were rot in there for eternity. It settled one point for him though: he was certain now that no one had lived here for months. And, judging by the mess in their refrigerator, whoever used to be here had left unexpectedly.

            Just for good measure, he finished exploring the hut. The bathroom was miniscule but functional. The water ran brown with rust and sand for the first few minutes after Lance turned it on, but eventually cleared. He splashed his face clean of the dust, although he was careful not to swallow. The cracked ceramic floor was outlined in the sand that had gathered between the crevices. The sink had a glass with a toothbrush and almost empty tube of toothpaste sitting on it, and a comb with four of its teeth missing. The shower was marked only by its wide metal head and a flimsy, tattered curtain hanging off two metal rods; the drain was set into the floor. A few strands of black hair were curled over it.

            Up the ladder, there was an almost empty attic. The slanted ceiling was so low that Lance could only stand fully upright in the exact center. There was a mattress with crumpled sheets and a thin blanket thrown across it, and a cardboard box. A few scattered pairs of socks, boxer shorts, and a black t-shirt made a loose pile of dirty laundry next to the mattress, but otherwise the room was bare. Outside was also mostly uninteresting: a well for groundwater explained how the house had plumbing, and the concrete attachment to the house had a generator connected to a set of solar panels around the back of the hut, which explained how the fridge was still running, as well as containing a few rusty gardening tools, but that was it. Lance went back inside to the main room and stared at the date glaring at him from that sheet of paper again. He reached down, hesitated, and then reasoned that his fingerprints were already all over everything.

            “In for a penny, in for a pound,” he shrugged, and picked it up.

            Examining it gave him nothing new. There were fragments of printed text on the back, but he was pretty sure that was just because it was scrap paper. He sat down on the couch, turning the paper over and over in his hands. DON’T FORGET – TOMORROW. The words mocked him.

            On a whim, he reached over and grabbed the nearest book off a shelf next to him, disturbing a cloud of dust as he did so. The spines of all the books were already thoroughly broken, so it fell open on his lap. It was a history of the region. A quick scan of the table of contents told him that it began more or less in the 1600s and worked its way up through the end of the last century. The earlier chapters in particular were stuck full of Post-It notes. He flipped through it slowly, seeing sections of the text underlined and circled, accompanied by exclamation points and question marks.

            The page it fell open to, the one where the reader’s annotation marks were so heavy they almost obscured the actual text, contained a picture similar to the ones on the conspiracy board and a single paragraph. Lance read.

 

>             One peculiarity is the prevalence of cave drawings of what appears to be a female lion, which fill countless caves in one concentrated area (see Map 2.4). While the scholarly consensus is that they must actually be drawings of cougars, they bear an uncanny resemblance to a female African lion in the proportion of the head and their build. As of yet there are no authoritative studies on these drawings since access has always posed a problem – first because of the terrain and climate, and in more recent years because of Galaxy Garrison’s restrictions on people living or working in the area due to safety concerns over pilot training and weapons testing. The little research that has been done found several patterns that repeat across most of the drawings with slight alterations, suggesting an evolving mythos.14 However, the story depicted does not appear to be tied to any other myths or folktales from the region. Even stranger, recent radiocarbon dating suggests that the very oldest of these drawings might date to roughly 8000 BCE, around 4000 years older than any other cave drawings found in North America, while the newest ones may even have appeared after colonial exploration and settlement began in the 19th century.15 This makes little to no sense given what we know of the movements of Native American populations through this region (see Chapter 3). The working theory among scholars is that the various tribes present at different points in history each discovered these cave drawings, interpreted them, reinvented them to fit their own myths, and then redrew their version in a cave nearby. More in-depth interpretations of the story being told in these drawings, its significance to Native American culture, and the history of the region, will have to await further research.

 

            Scrawled in the top corner of the page was a handwritten annotation: “If completely fictional, why consistent patterns across tribes/time? What was start of myth?” Lance worried his bottom lip. He set the book down on the table and grabbed the next one without paying any attention. The cover was a startling green on black pattern, with the title written in such big font it almost completely obscured the design: _ALIENS: The Secret History of Galaxy Garrison_. He groaned, covering his face with his hands.

            “Nope. Okay, if this isn’t telescope man’s house, it’s the house of his even crazier cousin,” he said. “Nope, nope, nope, I’m done. I am… I am done with this. Time to go home.” He shoved the books back onto the shelf, stood up, and marched out the door. The sun was beginning to fall into the west, dipping below the mountains. Lance took a swig from his water bottle, swung himself onto the hoverbike, and took off towards town, refusing to look back as the strange little desert hut shrank into invisibility on the horizon behind him.

 

*

 

            Lance was singing, stirring peppers, onions, and snap peas together, when Cal walked in. He gave him a cheery wave, and reached back with to turn down the quick-paced Spanish music blasting from a speaker on the counter, continuing to dance side to side, swaying his hips along, as adjusted the heat on the stove.

            “ _And I’d never seen eyes like hers before_ ,” he sang, imitating the singer’s vibrato on the last word. “ _Hey, how was school_?”

            “ _You’re cooking_?” Cal asked, dropping his backpack off his shoulder with a thunk. “ _What is that? It smells delicious_.”

            “ _Nothing special_ ,” he shrugged. “ _Just kind of a stir-fry, fast and easy. I was thinking of making fricasé de pollo one night if you’d like, I just need to leave it to marinate the night before._ ”

            “ _Since when do you cook_?” Cal asked, bending over to untie his shoes.

            “ _Since Hunk_.” With a quick twist of his wrist Lance shook some salt over the pan, keeping his hand high to avoid any drops of hot oil. “ _I had the worst crash in the flight simulator I’d ever had, my advisor told me I’d never get into the Garrison, I got back a theory test that I flat-out failed, hid in a bathroom in the basement for three hours before I limped my way back to the dorms during dinnertime in order to avoid running into anyone, and ten minutes later Hunk turned up with the most delicious black bean soup I’ve ever eaten in my life. Probably would have been even better if I didn’t keep crying into it. Hunk said he’d wanted to do something more traditionally Cuban, give me a taste of home and all, but this was the best he could manage since he wasn’t even really supposed to be in the kitchen in the first place and had to scrounge for ingredients. He kept_ apologizing _, he was so anxious, meanwhile I couldn’t even keep my voice steady long enough to actually thank him for it._

“ _So then like a week later, once I’d pulled myself together and convinced my teacher to let me retake the theory test, I was determined I was going to cook something for_ him _, you know, to thank him. I managed to get into the kitchen by telling the chef I was Hunk’s friend – he worked there for some extra cash on weekends and one of his moms was a chef, he could cook better than anyone else in that kitchen – but I ended up with the saddest, driest, burnt-up fried plantains you’ve ever seen in your life. It was a total disaster. I wouldn’t have dared try to make him eat them, I just threw them away. But I must have had the most pitiful puppy-dog look on my face after that because Hunk knew something was wrong, and when I finally confessed what had happened he was so touched that he insisted he get to teach me to cook. We spent Sunday mornings in the kitchen since the simulators weren’t available until noon._ ”

            “ _Hunk was your roommate back in prep school, right?_ ” Lance scraped the spoon slowly around the edge of the pan.

            “ _Yeah. Sweetest guy I’ve ever met_ ,” he said. Cal tucked the laces inside his shoes and set them carefully in a boot tray.

            “ _I met his moms_ ,” he said. Lance kept his eyes fixed on the pan. “ _They were lovely people. His brother too_.” Lance stabbed a pepper with the fork and sampled it. Almost done, could use another couple minutes, he decided. “ _So, you planning to share that or what?_ ” He sent Cal a relieved grin.

            “ _Patience, patience,_ ” he admonished, waving a spoon at his brother. “ _It’s not done yet_.” Cal slid onto a chair and crossed an ankle over his knee, watching expectantly.

            “ _Cooking, speaking English in the morning, you really have changed a lot_ ,” he mused. Lance shrugged.

            “ _None of this is recent_ ,” he said.

            “ _Guess we don’t see each other all that often anymore_.” There was a moment of quiet, the Spanish singer still crooning gently from the speaker. Lance murmured the lyrics under his breath, swaying almost imperceptibly. He felt Cal’s eyes on the back of his neck but didn’t turn around. Another few stirs around with his spoon and he stepped back, satisfied.

            “ _There’s rice in the pot_ ,” he gestured. Cal grabbed a plate and helped himself. The two of them moved around one another in sync, navigating the compressed little apartment kitchen to set out silverware and water, Lance dropping a used cutting board and knife into the sink to be washed later. They ate in comfortable silence, the muted sound of a guitar from the speaker and the indistinct noises of people having their own dinners in the apartments above and below providing a soundtrack to their quiet company. Only after both their plates were scraped clean did Lance sit back, crossing his ankle across his knee to match Cal, and ask if he had any critiques.

            “ _Not a one. You know I’m terrible at cooking, why didn’t you do this before now?_ ” Lance shrugged, throwing his arms over the back of the chair.

            “ _I was recovering from being an invalid. Show some consideration to your little brother._ ” Cal rolled his eyes.

            “ _Right_. _Well, you’re cooking dinner from now on. You want to stay in this apartment, you’re going to earn your keep._ ”

            “ _Hey! That wasn’t in my contract!_ ”

            “ _I’m changing the terms of our agreement. Older sibling privileges_.” Lance could have sworn the glint in Cal’s eyes was almost mischievous.

            “You _are the most— the most insufferable— you dirty little f—_ ”

            “Lance,” Cal gasped in mock horror. “ _Language, please_.”

            “ _I’ll language you!_ ” Lance growled. He launched himself at Cal, trying to yank him off the chair, but couldn’t make him budge.

            “ _Please, Lance, you know you could never win when we fought_.”

            “ _Maybe not. Buuuuuuut… I do know your weak spot_ ,” Lance gave Cal the evilest grin he could and Cal met him with a glare.

            “ _You wouldn’t dare_ ,” he said suspiciously, slowly placing his foot on the floor.

            “ _Oh I would_ ,” Lance said. He went to his knees, grabbed Cal’s foot, and tickled the bottom. Cal shrieked, kicking at him, but Lance hung on grimly to his leg and continued to tickle. Cal was somewhere between screaming and laughing, trying to shove Lance away, but his position from the chair was too awkward and he couldn’t get to his feet with Lance hanging on to his leg.

            “ _You absolute ass_ ,” he cried. “ _Two can play at this game, you know_.”

            “ _No!_ ” Lance shrieked as Cal bent over and reached for his ribs. He let go of his grip on Cal’s leg to knock away his hands. “ _Sorry, sorry, truce!_ ”

            “ _Not a chance_ ,” Cal said, jumping to his feet. Lance crab-walked backward until he managed to flip over, trip up to his feet, and attempt to sprint away. Cal caught him and knocked them both onto the air mattress, his fingers tickling agony into his sides.

            “ _Let goooooooo_ ,” he groaned through involuntary laughter, slapping ineffectually at his brother’s arms. “ _You’re an adult, you’re supposed to be too old for this_.” He squirmed, trying to wiggle his way out of Cal’s grasp, but he had Lance pinned down, still digging his fingers mercilessly into his ribs. “ _Calixto Sanchez, if you don’t stop I am going to burn every single one of those dinners you want me to cook for you_.” Cal paused, squinting at him, his knees digging into Lance’s hips.

            “ _You wouldn’t eat burnt food for the next two months just to spite me_.”

            “ _Try me_ ,” Lance dared. Cal stared him down a moment longer, then flipped off of him. Lance sighed in relief, gave it a single beat, and dove for Cal’s feet, throwing his torso across Cal’s legs to keep them in place.

            “ _You CHEAT!_ ” Cal shouted, trying to shove him off. Lance couldn’t hold his position long before Cal managed to pull him away and they devolved into wrestling. Lance discovered there was a lot more of him since the last time they did this: his limbs had stretched long and he was all angles now, all elbows and knees and bony shoulders that he could shove up against the block of muscle that was his brother to try and push him off the mattress. They were almost evenly matched for a few minutes, but Cal eventually managed to shove Lance onto his stomach and pull his arms behind him. Lance kicked ineffectually for a few seconds, like he was swimming, but Cal was sitting on his back and he couldn’t reach him.

            “ _Okay, okay, you win, you always win, I’ll cook nice things for you_ ,” Lance groaned, and buried his face into the air mattress. Cal didn’t say anything, only released his grip, but Lance could feel the smugness rolling off him in waves. “ _No need to be so damn proud of yourself_.”

            “ _I have no idea what you’re talking about_ ,” Cal said in a tone that told Lance he knew _exactly_ what he was talking about.

            “ _Suuuuuuure_ ,” Lance said, rolling his eyes. He flipped himself over onto his back. “ _You wanna watch a movie tonight?_ ” he asked. Cal shook his head.

            “Some _of us have homework to do. On Saturday maybe. Oh, speaking of which, Louisa’s said she’s going to come visit on Saturday. Midterms were this week so she can take a bit of a break._ ”

            “ _Sweet_ ,” Lance said, spotting the pot of rice still sitting on the stove and remembering he still had dishes to do. He sighed, pushed himself to his feet, and ambled back over to the kitchen. He pushed the volume on the speaker back up, rolled up his sleeves, and turned on the sink, running the water over his fingers until it got hot. “ _You know, it’s a pretty dumb idea to build a school out in the desert_ ,” he reflected. “ _The town has the lake, I know, but the Garrison’s far enough out that it can’t be easy to cart all the water they need all the way out there_.” He said nothing about the strange little hut with its personal well that seemed so wildly impractical, so far from everything.

            “ _Well they needed a big open space that no one else wanted so they could just claim it as theirs and then they wouldn’t ever have to worry about flight regulations or anything_ ,” Cal said offhandedly, opening up his computer. Lance paused, hands submerged in sudsy water.

            “ _Wait, so, how much of the desert is the Garrison’s private property?_ ” he asked. Cal frowned at him.

            “ _I don’t know exactly but it goes on for miles. I mean, that’s how they keep the town from expanding out in that direction, they own all the land._ ” Lance felt his breath hitch but tried to keep his voice calm.

            “ _So… If someone were… living out in the desert…_ ” Cal shook his head.

            “ _They couldn’t be. Well, not legally anyway. But like you said, why would anyone want to live out in the desert anyway? There’s nothing out there_.”

            “ _Right_ ,” Lance muttered, scrubbing oil residue forcefully off a pan. “ _Nothing but a whole lot of sand_.”

 

*

 

            He spent almost ten minutes standing on the porch without quite managing to grab the doorknob. He very nearly convinced himself to turn around and go back to the city. This was almost definitely the worst idea he’d ever had. The knowledge that he was now trespassing not just on the abandoned house of some weirdo but also technically on _Garrison_ property, in a house they couldn’t possibly know about because Lance was sure they would flip their shit if they did, full of what might, he was realizing, be _stolen_ Garrison tech, and books all about how the Garrison was really an alien cover-up organization or something of the kind, made his heart pound painfully against his ribs every time he started to move toward the door. He paced on the porch, muttering to himself.

            “Maybe someone built this house before the Garrison even got here? And then just… refused to leave? Because clearly someone’s been living here within the last year even if they’ve been gone for a few months at this point. But how did the Garrison not notice it ever? We are pretty far out, so I get why they might not have noticed it since they arrived, but they must have, have surveyed the property or whatever you call it when they first bought it, right? Okay, so if the house wasn’t here when the Garrison arrived, who _built a house_ in the _middle of the desert_ on _government property_? Who _does_ that?” He turned back and caught sight of the broken-down fence, partially buried in sand, that marked out what he thought must have once been a garden. “Some, some weird… hermit… farmer… obsessed with aliens… Okay, Clark Kent or whoever the fuck…” He turned, faced the door, and before he could think any more about it, shoved it open.

            He half expected to see some wild man with long wiry hair asleep on the couch, or Garrison lieutenants waiting to arrest him, but it looked exactly the way he had left it yesterday. He picked his way gingerly across the room to the stacks of paper against the back wall. Brushing away the dust, he grabbed a handful of pages off of the first stack, settled on the couch, and started to read.

            The same date that he had gone missing, that was written on that “Don’t forget” paper, was written in bold across the top of the first page and circled. There were a series of calculations written out, all in that same spiky handwriting. At one point, the writer seemed to have made an error or a series of errors, because the math got so crossed-out and scribbled over that it became nearly illegible. Lance, glancing around, spotted a pencil lying on one of the bookshelves, seized it, and finished out the calculation in the margin so he could read the whole thing. It took him a couple pages to figure out exactly what he was calculating: this guy was, for some reason, tracking the movement of stars by hand, calculating, if Lance had to guess, how they would appear in the sky on that particular date. Hit by a thought, he jumped to his feet and walked over to the star chart superimposed on a map of the world pinned up on the conspiracy board. The star chart hadn’t been printed off the internet, he could see now, it had been rendered and printed off on this guy’s own computer, from his own calculations. Lance whistled.

            “Wow, okay Kent, can I call you Kent? I’m going to call you Kent, it sounds better than ‘freaky conspiracy guy.’ You _really_ do not trust the Garrison, or… anyone, do you? How long did this take you?” he wondered, looking at the sheaf of papers in his hand. True, it wasn’t like he had tried to chart every single star in the sky, mostly just the big constellations and the planets, but it would still have been painstaking to finish – and clearly, judging from Kent’s endless errors and redo’s, math was not his greatest strength. One margin next to a particularly blacked out scribble had “WHY THE FUCK CAN’T I DO MATH” written next to it.

            “Okay, so, you plotted the stars on this date. Whoop-de-do. What of it?” Lance chewed his lip, looking at the map that took up the center of the conspiracy board. He touched it lightly with the tips of his fingers. “Maybe I should…” He let the thought trail away. Taking off on his rental hoverbike into the middle of the desert, _again_ , without a clue what he was looking for or if there even was something to look for, on the basis of a map in the abandoned shack of a crazy person, seemed like seriously pushing his luck. “Save it until I’ve worked out what Kent here was up to,” he decided, and then turned back to survey the chaotic room with its piles upon piles of paper in dismay. “…If I can,” he muttered.

            He plopped back down on the sofa, setting the star chart calculation sheets aside on the table, and reached for another handful of paper. This one was topped with the question “What does ‘arrival’ mean?” and that same date. Underneath, there were bullet points brainstorming an answer.

 

  * The lion?
  * ALIENS?
  * (The lion could be an alien???)
  * A message?
  * A disease?
  * A meteor / some other kind of disaster?
  * Some kind of ‘chosen one’ bullshit?
  * People?
  * People returning to the caves?



 

            The bullet points went on, each straying further into desperate imagination than the last. Lance flipped the page, and found a grocery list scrawled on the back:

 

—ramen

—jerky

—batteries

—frozen pizza

—mac & cheese

—potato chips

—eggs if they’re cheap

—toothpaste

 

            Lance raised his eyebrows, spinning the pencil between his fingers, and after a moment’s hesitation, set it against the page and wrote in small, neat letters, “Your insides are rotting, Kent.” He shook his head, setting the sheet of paper aside, and picked up the next one, turning it horizontal to read it. This one had “THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING” written in the center, and “PROPHECY” written at the top, surrounded by question marks. There was a dotted line drawn between them. Next to it were various thoughts: “If you had the ToE you could predict the future,” “Is a partial ToE possible?” “We can predict the movements of the stars, stands to reason there are other steps between that and a complete ToE that would allow you to predict other things,” “Attractions like gravity? Forces in the universe with predictable patterns we just haven’t documented/understood yet?” and then, in the corner, in very small letters, Kent had written, “Maybe it’s just magic.”

            Lance sighed, setting the paper down. “I could spend months trying to pick apart this guy’s mind,” he said to himself. “Kent, what the hell were you trying to figure out? What do you mean by _prophecy_ and _arrival_?” He stared forward, zoning out, when the corner of a newspaper peeking out from under a photograph on the conspiracy board caught his eye. Curious, he pushed himself to his feet, and pulled up the picture of the mountains to find himself confronted with the sober face of Takashi Shirogane, staring out from over the top of his obituary. Although the picture had been left untouched, the writing was scrawled over in red Sharpie. Kent had written himself a reminder in huge, bold strokes: “REMEMBER THE GARRISON LIES.” Lance caught his breath. No one had quite believed it when the Kerberos mission had been reported to have crashed. No one could believe that Shiro, first in his class and the best pilot the Garrison had seen in a decade, would make a ‘pilot error’ that would get himself and his whole crew killed. It simply didn’t make any sense. It sounded crazy, it sounded like a conspiracy theory, and they would never have really questioned whether the Garrison was telling them the truth, but the doubt lingered in people’s voices when they talked about it, in people’s eyes when they glanced at each other as they heard the news.

            Had Kent discovered something? Did he know something, have some concrete evidence that the rest of them didn’t know about? Almost everything else in this shack was covered in question marks, confusion and uncertainty bleeding out of every line of writing. There was absolutely no doubt in the bright red Sharpie. Shiro’s picture watched him, his young face serious and proud. REMEMBER THE GARRISON LIES. Lance touched the newspaper clipping lightly with the tips of his fingers.

            “Okay, Kent,” he said softly. “I’m listening.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT**  
>  My thesis is seriously kicking my ass, and as excited as I am about writing this fic, I simply do not have time to work on it at the moment. Therefore, I will not be updating again until sometime after May 6th. I'm really, really sorry it's such a long wait, especially since I had said this chapter would be coming out two weeks ago and it's already late, but I just really don't have any extra time right now. I hope you'll all stick around and be back in May! Your kudos and comments mean the world to me. The good news is, after my thesis is done and I've graduated, I will have a LOT more free time (at least until I finally manage to get a job... haha... ha...) and should be able to update much faster.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your patience, and again, sorry for the long wait.
> 
> PS. I invented a floorplan for the shack that is slightly inconsistent with what we see in the show, and if you want to know why I didn't stick exactly to the shack as shown in canon, [you can observe my slow descent into insanity trying to figure out where Keith pees here](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/158516413237/okay-for-real).


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note: this chapter includes a brief allusion to underage-ish drinking (by which I mean he was sixteen at the time, which is legal in some places and not in others). Since I anticipate other underage characters may drink in future chapters (at the least, the Paladins will probably drink nunvil) I have updated the tags to reflect this

            Lance pulled himself hesitantly onto the massive red hoverbike. He’d turned it on briefly yesterday to check that it still worked, but he had yet to actually try and ride it. Towing it back to the outskirts of town had been a pain in the neck and it would really have made more sense to switch out – ride Kent’s bike, tow the rental – but Lance was intimidated. It was almost twice the size of the bikes he was used to.

            Still, he didn’t exactly have the money to rent out a hoverbike every day, and eventually someone would get suspicious of where he was going. So he’d remembered an abandoned parking garage on the edge of town, no longer in use since the Garrison moved their bullet train station, and hidden the bike there. He couldn’t very well bring it to an actual parking lot, especially since it confirmed another of his suspicions about Kent: some of his Garrison technojunk was _definitely_ stolen. At the very least, the bike was. Unlike the older model rentals that still used keys, the Garrison hoverbikes functioned on handprint pads programmed to specific people. Clearly, Kent had hacked the handprint pad and, lacking the finesse to reprogram it for his own print, had just made it accessible to everyone, because it woke right up when Lance touched it.

            The solar powered engine was inaudible but he could feel the bike humming with energy underneath him. He took a deep breath. “Alright, Lance, c’mon, what’s the worst that could happen?” He paused, one hand gripping the brake. “Stupidest question to ask,” he berated himself. He loosened his hold on the brake, twisted the gear, and the bike shot forward.

            He nearly went flying at least five times and by the end he was cursing the bike as a sentient, volatile thing that was definitely trying to throw him off, but he reached the shack without any major incidents and sighed in relief as he slid off the bike. It was easier to reenter this time, as certain as he was that Kent had been gone for a long time.

            “No reason he’d come back now. You’re not here, are you, Kent?” Lance called. “No aliens in the attic, right?” Anxiety made him tense for a second as the wood creaked in the wind, but the shack otherwise remained silent as ever. “Right,” he said, shaking it off with a nervous laugh. “Okay, time to get to work.”

            He rubbed his hands, turning to the piles of paper that he’d been pulling from yesterday. Some lingering fear of leaving evidence of his presence had made him replace all the papers he’d already read, so he pulled them off first, setting them out on the table. Then he slowly started to pull apart the rest of the piles, sorting them into smaller groups of pages as he followed long calculations and pages of speculation and brainstorming, trying to find a chronology or any kind of method to follow.

            The table filled up fast, until the only space left was a hole in the center around a couple sheets of paper – one with a map, one with some kind of mathematical graph, and one with that damning date – the empty water bottle, and that gross can that had once had beans. Lance considered it for a moment.

            “Yeah that’s gonna have to go,” he decided. Reaching out, he pinched the sides between his thumb and index finger, unwilling to touch any more of it than he had to, and only then realized he didn’t see a trashcan anywhere. Holding the can out in front of him, he walked through to the kitchen. Still not seeing evidence of a trashcan, he pulled open the cabinet door under the sink, and was immediately assaulted by the grossly sweet smell of rot and the listless buzzing of a near-dead fly. He pulled back, clapping his free hand over his nose, and carefully dropped the can into the trashcan. Then he kicked the cabinet door closed.

            “Okay,” he muttered, breathing slowly through mouth. “This is… This is not gonna work.” He glanced back down at the cabinet, groaned, reached down, careful to keep his face distant, and pulled it open again. He gingerly pulled out the trash bag, tied it at the top, and marched it out of the house. It might smell even worse for baking in the sun for a few hours but at least he could air out the hut.

            With the offending trash bag gone, he knelt down and investigated what else was underneath the sink. It was just as sparse on amenities as the rest of the house, with one old empty grocery bag bunched into a ball in the corner, a half-used roll of paper towels, an empty bottle of dish soap, a dried up sponge, and nothing else. Lance sighed, pulled out the grocery bag, pulled it open, and set it inside the trashcan, which he pulled out from under the sink.

            “Please tell me you at least have…?” he muttered, and spotted an old wooden broom leaning in a corner behind the ladder to the attic. “Oh good, one point for Kent, he owns a broom,” he sighed in relief. Ducking under the ladder, he pulled it out, breaking several cobwebs in the process and trying to shake them off where they got stuck to his hands. The bottom of the broom was a messy glomp of sand, dust, and hair. Lance made a face, grabbing a paper towel to try and pull off some of the mess.

            The hut may have been tiny, but it took him almost two hours before the whole ground floor felt decently swept. Lance leaned on his broom, grinning at his handiwork. “You have a _floor_ , Kent! Not just piles of sand! Who knew?” His fingers tapped against the handle. “I bet this place even looks halfway decent when it’s clean. I mean, you’re still a weirdo hermit conspiracy theorist in the middle of the desert, but you could be a weirdo hermit conspiracy theorist with neatly swept floors and a home that is welcoming to guests.” He pursed his lips. “I’ll need some supplies, though.” He put the broom back into its corner, picked up the grocery bag now full of dirt and dust, hesitated at all the papers still spread across the table, and then shook his head. They’d be there when he got back.

            He collected the other trash bag from outside, carefully dropping it inside the second one, and slung it across the handlebar of the bike. He’d drop it in a dumpster on the edge of the city. He glanced back at the shack and gave a short wave. “See ya tomorrow, Kent!”

            The bike sped off into the desert, still just barely under his control, kicking up a trail of dust and sand in his wake.

 

*

 

            “Keeeeeent! I’ve brought preeeeeesents!” Lance let the duffel bag drop with a heavy thunk, rolling his shoulder and neck. “God that was heavy to carry all the way here. Alright, want to see what I’ve brought?” He knelt down, unzipped the bag, and started pulling out its contents. “Okay let’s see – trash bags, first of all, because I have a feeling we’re going to go through a lot of these supplies, then we’ve got more paper towels, some all-purpose cleaning sprays, some Clorox wipes, a toilet brush and some toilet bowl cleaner fluid because I am going to have to use that thing eventually, some reusable rags, rubber gloves, oh! Here’s Cal’s Swiffer, this I’m going to have to take back at the end of the day before he knows it’s gone – God knows how I’d explain having to borrow his _Swiffer_ – but I got some wet pads for it so I can get the rest of the sand up off the floor. And I bought some Febreze, both the air freshener kind and that stuff you use on fabric, because I have a feeling that sofa and that rug have not gotten any attention in a _long_ time.” Lance sat back on his heels, grinning. “This place is going to be spotless before you know it! Oh, and of course– the most important thing–” He rummaged in the front pocket of the duffel and triumphantly pulled out his headphones. “Can’t have a cleaning day without some music,” he said. “Let’s start with something traditional, don’t you think? I downloaded this specially, I haven’t seen this movie since I was three.” He snapped the headphones over his ears, tapped his ear to bring up the screen, and clicked his selection. He chuckled to himself as a woman’s sweet voice, fuzzy with the age of the recording, drifted through his ears.

            “Just whistle while you work…” Lance hummed inexpertly along to the half-forgotten tune as he snapped open a trash bag, grabbed the all-purpose cleaning spray and a handful of paper towels, and attacked the thick layer of grime and dust covering Kent’s home.

            He sorted papers as he went, finding an unused stack of Sticky-Notes that he used to label the neat piles he set up on the table. After his Disney princess beginning he switched over to more modern and upbeat songs, a mix of English and Spanish that kept him dancing and moving around, singing along with them. It was a little scary the way the rags and towels turned black with dirt within seconds, but the longer he cleaned the less the decrepit and depressing the shack looked. He couldn’t do much for the paint peeling off the walls or the ragged threads on the edge of the rug, but after a few minutes of scrubbing the windows clean the sunlight flooded in with twice the strength it had before, brightening the room so much it felt positively cheerful. In fact, after about an hour, the sunlight coming through the windows had gotten so hot Lance understood why Kent had sheets pinned up like curtains over them. He glanced critically at them, rubbing at the sweat trickling down the back of his neck.

            “I don’t have any kind of detergent with me. I wonder how Kent washed his clothes?” He paused, and grimaced. “I wonder _if_ Kent washed his clothes,” he amended. “Kent, the more I think about this place the more you distress me, do you know that?” He worried the inside of his cheek, considering. “If I just rinse them out in the sink it’ll be better than nothing,” he decided. “Shouldn’t be any sweat or anything to get out of them, anyway, just dust.”

            He left the sheets outside to dry, hanging them over the back of the doors into the hut and the concrete attachment with the generator. Leaving the rapidly heating main room behind for the moment, he moved to the bathroom, scrubbing viciously at the floor, the sink, and the toilet until they gleamed. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves to clean the hair and gunk off the top of the shower drain in the floor and paused, examining what he was pinching between his fingers.

            “You really have pretty long hair, don’t you, Kent? You’re not a girl, are you? No, those were definitely boxers I saw on your bed upstairs. Well, I guess haircuts aren’t exactly easy to come by out here. Or maybe you just like long hair.” Lance shrugged. “There was this guy at the Garrison, Keith, he had a _mullet_ , if you can believe it. I know, what century is he living in? See, normally I think long hair on guys is super attractive, but a _mullet_? That’s just weird, man. You don’t have a mullet, do you, Kent? As long as you don’t have a mullet we’re good.” He dropped his handful of hair and congealed soap gunk into the trash bag. “I’m gonna go see if those sheets are dry yet,” he said.

            The sheets had dried rapidly, if a little stiffly, in the heat of the desert sun, so Lance took them back in and pinned them back up over all the windows but one, cooling the room considerably. He went back to work, dusting and rubbing clean all the electronics, careful not to get anything wet. Who knew how well insulated some of this stuff might be? He sang along to his music as he went, the sound of salsa sinking him into the memory of a warm Cuban night, with the stars sparkling overhead and dancers in tight red dresses and white shirts that glowed in the flickering lights of the clubs. He and Louisa and Cal, all home for the summer, had gone out to celebrate Lance’s acceptance into the pilot program at the Garrison. It wasn’t his first taste of alcohol, but it was the first time he’d drunk enough that the world settled into something soft yet vibrant around him. His veins buzzed and everything was colorful and whirling. Perhaps that’s what had given him the courage to grab the hand of the boy with slender fingers and eyes the color of teak and wavy dark hair that fell in sweaty strands to his shoulders. Their feet kept time with the lilting salsa music, hips and legs and chests pressed close by the crowd of dancers around them. Lance’s fingers tangled in the boy’s hair as he pushed their foreheads together. Nothing but his first real flight, the first time he’d been allowed in a real hovercraft rather than the simulator, quite compared to the rush of tingling adrenaline that ran through his entire body when they kissed. His hand knotted into a fist around the thick, soft strands of hair, moving across the boy’s head down to the back of his neck. He was warm and pliant and exhilarating and his lips were sweet and sticky with alcohol.

            The loud beat drop of an English rap song jerked him back to the present and he realized he’d been absentmindedly polishing the same spot on the holoscreen projector over and over for the last few minutes. He moved on to the 3-D printer next to it, pausing to take a swig from his water bottle.

            “You know, Kent, I’ve always found flirting with girls easy. Well, I mean, maybe not so easy considering my track record of actual _success_ ,” Lance laughed awkwardly, “but I’ve never had trouble coming up with the _words_ , you know? But guys have always turned me into a shy mess. Why is that, do you think?” The house creaked around him in the wind. The rapper spat words at a hundred miles an hour in his ear. “Yeah, I don’t know either,” he said easily, giving the 3-D printer a last once-over with his rag.

            By the time Lance glanced up and saw the sun starting to sink toward the horizon, the bathroom was spotless, the main room was clean as a whistle and the papers and books were beginning, however slowly, to sort themselves into manageable groups, and the kitchen was done except for the stove and the fridge. The stove had some old rust and food stains that were proving painfully stubborn, and Lance was going to have to consider if it was worth it coming back with steel wool to attack it with. The fridge he took one glance at and came to same conclusion he had the other day: the rotten mess inside the fridge was Kent’s problem if he ever chose to come back and deal with it. Fortunately, the only edible things in the cupboard were non-perishables: a couple cans of soup, an unopened packet of ramen noodles, and a box of cereal. The cereal was only a month past its expiration date, but Lance threw it out anyway, just to be safe. He also discovered that Kent owned a grand total of one pot, one pan, three plates, one bowl, one spoon, two forks, and four knives, two of which were the bigger and sharper kind that could be used for cutting vegetables or meat. He had run through three entire rolls of paper towels, most of the Clorox wipes, all but one of the Swiffer pads, and filled two trash bags to bursting. His clothes clung to him with sweat and grime, but he was grinning as he pulled off the headphones and put the remaining cleaning supplies under the sink – all except for the Swiffer, which he stuck back in the duffel.

            “I’ll come back tomorrow and do the attic and the little concrete shed, just to be thorough,” he decided. “Then… then we’ll see what I can find.” He slung the duffel back over his shoulder, giving one last glance through the shack. “See ya tomorrow, Kent,” he called.

 

*

 

            Lance hesitated at the top of the ladder. Even though he’d already been through everything else in the house and this was by far the barest room of the lot, it was still clearly Kent’s bedroom, and something about that seemed like a privacy barrier he shouldn’t break. On the other hand, it was going to drive him crazy knowing that the rest of the house was spotless while this room sat dusty and unkempt with piles of dirty boxers. Plus, he was desperate to see if he could get a clue about who Kent was or where he had gone. If it meant unravelling the mystery of how he’d even found this shack in the first place, he was willing to invade somebody’s privacy at least a little.

            “Here goes nothing,” he sighed, tossing his cleaning supplies up into the room.

            It was uncomfortable, sweaty work, with the slanted roof forcing him to hunch over and reach the broom awkwardly into corners to beat away the cobwebs so thick he could grab handfuls of them. He tossed the sheets, the pillow sham, and the dirty clothes down the ladder, washed them in the sink and hung them over the backs of the kitchen chairs to dry. He briefly puzzled over what, if anything, to do with the mattress, and ultimately just decided to spray it with Febreze. That left only the box.

            He dicked around for a few minutes, picking errant hairs and dust motes out of the bottom of the broom, trying to decide whether he ought to actually open the box or just leave it be, but there was really nothing else to do. He’d already dusted out the concrete shed that morning – the generator was clearly built to be self-sustaining so he just brushed the dust away and didn’t mess with it – and everything else in the shack was spotless now. It was open the box or get to work on that intimidating mass of papers downstairs, and he still didn’t have a clue where he was supposed to start with that.

            “If I can learn anything about who you are it will help me figure out what you were trying to study out here,” he told Kent. “It might even help me find you so that I could ask you myself. On the other hand…” He glanced at the box. “You might have something seriously personal in there that isn’t any of my business.” He sighed. “What am I even doing here?” he asked. “I shouldn’t ever have walked in that door. I mean, this is somebody’s home, clearly, or at least it used to be.” He fiddled with a piece of tape peeling off the edge of the box, trying to guess what was in it and if it might help him. “But Pidge and Hunk are still missing, and this is the only lead I’ve got,” he murmured. He opened the box.

            There was a book sitting on top, bound with faux leather, its edges tattered and worn, some of the pages ripped, and a pen stuffed into the middle where the writing stopped. Lance set it carefully aside.

            The rest of the box was mostly clothes, dark pants and t-shirts and a well-worn brown raincoat folded haphazardly or just stuffed in. There were also, for some reason, three pairs of black fingerless gloves. An old pair of boots with a hole over the big left toe was stuffed down at the bottom. Besides that, there were a few odds and ends: a rusty Swiss Army knife, a half-empty pack of batteries, a wallet with about $20 stuffed inside, and down at the very bottom, a picture so faded and fuzzy and tattered Lance had to crab-walk over to the little circular window at the end of the room to look at it in better light.

            It looked like it was from a vintage polaroid camera, the kind of thing people only bought for novelty’s sake these days. It was clearly a selfie, the little four- or five-year-old boy in the foreground holding the camera out in front of him at arm’s length, grinning widely, eyes round and alight with happiness behind messy bangs. He was sitting on a man’s lap, who was bending down so their faces were side by side, holding the little boy’s shoulders, smiling tolerantly at the camera, his eyes fond and peaceful.

            “Is one of these you, Kent?” Lance wondered softly. His fingers grazed over the image. “No one keeps a picture like this unless it’s the only one they have.”

            He set the picture down carefully and repacked the box, folding up Kent’s clothes and setting them neatly back inside. He placed the picture on top carefully and closed the box. Finally, he turned to the book. Wetting his lips, he opened it to the first page. The entire thing was full of dated entries, like a diary. The first few lines were viciously scribbled through as he tried to start several times.

> ~~So S is gone~~
> 
> ~~The Garrison are liars they’re all fucking liars~~
> 
> ~~Maybe if I’d listened to my gut I could have convinced S taking that mission was a bad idea but I wanted~~
> 
> ~~Dad was~~
> 
> ~~I~~  

Finally, it restarted, much more cut and dried.

> Shack is still here. Generator was off but it still works once I brushed off the solar panels. Most of the tech in here still works too, if painfully slowly. Will see if I can reconfigure anything to update it some. Will have to do grocery hauls from time to time. Not sure how long I’m going to be here. Not sure how long I can be here. Kind of shocked they never found this place.

That was the entirety of the first entry. The next entry was dated almost two months later, and all it said was FOUND SOMETHING. The one from the day after read:

> Went back out to same area as yesterday. The carvings are _everywhere_ , at least four separate caves that I just glanced into. Will make a map marking out area. I can’t explain what it is but this is what’s been pulling at me. This is what I’ve been searching for, somehow without knowing it.

Lance stiffened, clenching the book between his hands. Searching for something, somehow without knowing it, sounded a hell of a lot like what had led him to this shack in the first place. Had Kent found whatever he was searching for and brought it here? Was it now attracting Lance? Could it be calling out to anyone else? What if someone else turned up?

            Out of reflex, he glanced at the trap, but nobody leapt out of it like a horror film jumpscare. He took a deep breath. “Okay, Sanchez, chill out. No one’s been here for months, there’s no reason to believe someone would suddenly turn up now,” he said. “Better to focus on what you’ve got in front of you.” He looked back down at the next entry.

> Went back out to caves with map of the area and started marking out where there are carvings. Also started sketching some of the carvings. They’re all either a lion or these symbols that I don’t recognize as any kind of language or code that I know. Will have to see if I can find a way of searching the symbols online if I don’t turn up anything in my books, but need to make sure no one traces it. I have a feeling that if the Garrison knows about these carvings, they don’t want anyone else to. Their property lines must be publicly available information; will see if I can find it. Gee I wonder if they’ll match up.

On a whim, Lance took the pen from the center of the books and wrote quickly in the margin, “Do you ever stop with the conspiracies? How do you live like this? It must be exhausting,” before looking down to the next entry, from a few days later.

> Took a break from mapping the carvings to go into town because the only food I had left was a frozen pizza and a jar of mustard and I didn’t feel like frozen pizza. Anyway, took the opportunity to go to the public library where they actually have property maps of the area on _paper_ still – hey, I’m not complaining – and made copies. Also checked out a couple books on obscure languages and symbols. Didn’t do an internet search for the images I found in the caves yet. Will save that as a last resort.
> 
> I did log into my old email on a whim. Nice to see I was right about foster family number Istoppedcounting not giving a rat’s ass about me. Not one single message from them. And I wasn’t reported missing, either. I checked.
> 
> Well, doesn’t matter. Less than a year now till I’m 18 anyway.

Lance let out a slow whistle between his teeth, setting the book down. “Kent…” he said. “What… happened to you?”

            It wasn’t the first time he considered that he could be sitting in a dead man’s house. Perhaps one of these caves he’d been studying had collapsed on his head. Or maybe he got stuck out in the desert and died. Or maybe he went into the city to get groceries and got hit by a bus. It had never occurred to him, though, that Kent might be young. He’d been picturing someone like the telescope man. But Kent was his age. Kent was still a kid with his life ahead of him, a life that should have been better than living as a conspiracy hermit.

            “How does a teenager end up living in an illegal shack in the middle of the desert?” he exploded. “Kent, what the _hell_ went wrong in your life?” Lance felt anger bubbling under the surface of his skin. His protective big brother instincts reared like a cobra, ready to strike out at whoever had callously left this _kid_ to fend for himself, whoever had failed him so badly that he ended up out here. He couldn’t stomach the thought of Louisa, or Cal, or his cousin Elena, or God forbid Beatriz or one of his youngest siblings, feeling so lost and abandoned that they ended up in a place like this. Whoever Kent was, he deserved better. He grabbed the pen and scribbled furiously in the margin, “I’m sorry everyone failed you so badly, Kent. I wish I could have been there for you.”

            He sat back, a little surprised by his own words. He had never even met this guy. Yet the fury that churned in his stomach burned hot and real. He couldn’t conceive of a life without his family. No matter how near or far, they were a constant, they were his rock, they were the thing he could always return to if he needed to. He knew he was lucky, but everyone deserved to have someone or something that anchored them to stability. No one should just be cut off to float in the world totally alone.

            He glanced up and scrambled to his feet with a yelp. He’d lost track of time, and while the hoverbike theoretically had enough battery life to last several hours into the night, he didn’t particularly care to test that. He scrambled back down the ladder, bringing the book with him and leaving it on the table so it could be the first thing he looked at when he came back.

            “Ah, dammit, I missed my appointment with the therapist,” he groaned, looking at the clock. “Well, whatever. She wasn’t helping anyway.” He paused on the way out the door, glancing back into the shack. “Cal stays home on the weekends and I don’t want to risk him finding out what I’ve been doing, plus Louisa’s coming over, so I won’t be back until Monday,” he said. “See you… See you then, Kent.” He yanked the door shut behind him, jumped onto the hoverbike, and took off into the setting sun.

 

*

 

            “Scooch up,” Louisa said, nudging Lance with her knee. He shuffled sideways on the couch, trying to leave room for Cal on his right.

            “How come I’m _always_ in the center?” he complained.

            “Because you’re the youngest, and you know this, and you know complaining about it changes nothing.” She plopped into Cal’s sagging couch with a sigh. “Cal, don’t forget extra salt for that popcorn!” she called, leaning over the armrest to try and see the kitchen. Cal didn’t respond, probably giving her a thumbs up. She sat back, clicking through the previews. “God, it’s been ages since I watched _Star Wars_ ,” she mused. “You’d think that would be something the Garrison would show, as like a movie night thing.” Lance raised his eyebrows.

            “ _You_ want to ask Iverson for approval for a movie night?” he asked. She laughed.

            “True enough. Still, they’re classics.” Lance frowned and folded his arms.

            “I still like the originals better,” he grumbled. “They’re the _real_ classics.”

            “Those special effects are _painful_ , little bro. They are physically painful for me to watch.”

            “I’m less than a year younger than you, and it’s _Star Wars_. It’s _nostalgic_. You’re not watching it for the special effects. Besides, Harrison Ford _is_ Han Solo. Robert Vic’s performance doesn’t hold a candle to him.”

            “True, but come on. Slave Leia? Ewoks? You _have_ to admit that the rebooted _Return of the Jedi_ is better.”

            “First of all, ewoks are adorable, but I will still grant you that on the basis of slave Leia and the admittedly pointless Threepio subplot if you will concede that the original _Empire_ is still the best film out of all of them. Prequels, sequels, and reboots.”

            “Can’t we all just agree to hate _Phantom Menace_ in any incarnation?” Cal asked, edging in front of the coffee table around to the far side of the sofa. He set the popcorn in Lance’s lap and plopped down next to him. “You two have this debate _every single time_.”

            “I am defending the integrity of the original stories that brought us all this joy and beauty to begin with,” Lance sniffed. “No one appreciates old movies anymore. They just want them remade newer and shinier.”

            “Hey, who watched every single Spider-Man movie with you growing up?” Louisa said, elbowing him. Lance clutched at the popcorn bowl, its warmth seeping into his arms and lap.

             “And you insist you hate every minute of the Tobey Maguire films.”

            “Just start the movie,” Cal groaned, snagging a handful of popcorn. Louisa rolled her eyes but pressed play.

            For all that he needled Louisa about the originals, Lance would admit to himself he still unabashedly loved the reboots. They’d all watched them enough times not only to recite the entire script along with the actors, but also to know the jokes and comments the other two would make throughout the film. Their watch party devolved into lighthearted banter and commentary (“Is he… going to ask him why the Imperial droids do whatever Obi-Wan says? No? We’re just cool with this?” “See, in the original, Luke _did_ ask—” “SHUT UP LANCE”) that occasionally sunk into silence and popcorn munching at a favorite scene (“Oh shush shush, it’s Vader and Leia next”). Louisa groaned and slapped a $5 bill into a smug Lance’s hand when Cal went on his inevitable tirade about the impossible physics in the structure of the Millenium Falcon four scenes earlier than she had bet on. Lance felt himself relaxing, tension easing out of his muscles in the comforting heat of his siblings pressed on either side of him and in the wash of familiar dialogue and characters. He could practically imagine he was eight years old and back in Cuba, their mamá hushing them because Beatriz was already asleep upstairs.

            They’d planned a marathon for the evening, so they went straight into _Empire Strikes Back_ with just a brief pause for a bathroom break. As the films rolled on, Lance felt his eyes growing heavy with sleepiness. He was sore and pleasantly worn out from his three days of cleaning up Kent’s hut, and perhaps calmer than he had been since he woke up in the hospital. He let himself slide down the couch cushion until he could rest his head against the back of the sofa, the near-empty popcorn bowl still loosely cradled on his lap, and let his eyes drift closed. All three of them had grown quieter as they grew tired, only making the occasional murmured comment. Lance felt himself slipping into sleep, making an effort to pry his eyes back open for some of his favorite bits, but he started losing seconds, and then minutes as he drifted in and out of consciousness, pleasantly suspended in secure contentment.

            The sound of an explosion sent a burst of adrenaline jolting through him. He snapped out of sleep with terrified urgency, legs and arms flailing as he surged to his feet, shouting, “QUIZNAK!” There was danger, he had to get– somewhere, had to find out who had attacked them–

            He blinked, confused and disoriented by the flashes and explosions on the television in front of him, uncomfortably bright in the mostly darkened room. Louisa had grabbed his forearm and he turned back to see her looking up at him in alarm. Cal was sitting up straight, frowning, mouth slightly parted. The plastic bowl had been upended onto Lance’s feet, popcorn kernels scattered onto the rug.

            “Lance?” Louisa asked, reaching out and pausing the movie. “Are you okay?”

            “I…” Lance stuttered, at a loss for words. “I must’ve fallen asleep and… and started dreaming. Sorry, I… I think the movie startled me.” He ran a hand awkwardly through his hair and sat back down on the sofa, bending over to pick up the fallen bowl.

            “What did you say?” Cal asked. “Quiz… What was that?” Lance faltered.

            “I… don’t know?” he said. “I’m… Um… What did I say?”

            “Quiz-something, I didn’t quite hear it,” Louisa said, suddenly realizing she was still gripping Lance’s arm and releasing him.

            “Maybe I was dreaming about taking a quiz?” Cal and Louisa glanced at each other across him.

            “It didn’t sound like that,” Louisa said.

            “I dunno, probably just sleep gibberish then,” Lance shrugged uneasily. “Sorry, I don’t know what happened. But I’m fine, Louisa, you can stop looking at me like that. Let’s just keep watching the movie.” She watched him for a few more seconds as he stubbornly refused to look at her, concentrating carefully on picking up all the leftover popcorn kernels, but finally she sighed and pressed play again. He sat back and watched the film, an odd edge on his nerves that hadn’t been there before.

 

*

 

            He always dreamt of flying these days. He dreamt of sailing through the stars, past galaxies, spinning around black holes, passing planets hanging like Christmas ornaments in the sky, shining in every color imaginable. In his dreams he was light and free. He flew without a ship, without controls, without a spacesuit, with no need to think. He simply slid unhindered through the universe, eyes wide with wonder.

            He came awake staring at the ceiling, his headphones askew. He could hear Louisa breathing slowly, asleep on the couch. He sat up, the air mattress shifting under his weight. He’d need to top up the air tomorrow, he thought absently. He tapped his headphones silent, pulled them off, and dropped them on his pillow. He pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, staring into the dark apartment. He hadn’t heard anything from Hopkins since he went to see him, which probably meant what he had told him hadn’t been that useful. Still, aside from the shack in the desert that he still couldn’t prove was connected to his disappearance, he only had one lead.

            He bit his lip before tossing off the blanket and rolling over to grab his phone. He opened his email, hesitated, and then typed in “Keith Kogane.”

            Keith wouldn’t still have his Garrison email, Lance knew that, but in a fit of desire for petty revenge after Keith had sneered at his failings in survival training he had stalked him – just a little bit – and found out his personal email address back at the Garrison. Just to sign him up for a few particularly annoying spam email lists.

            He sincerely hoped Keith hadn’t deleted his email as a result of the influx of spam. It was the only way he might be able to contact him. He chewed his lip nervously as he began to type.

 

**To:** Keith Kogane

**From:** Lance Sanchez

**Subject:**  PLEASE DON’T DELETE THIS PEOPLE ARE IN DANGER

Keith– 

PLEASE READ THIS. Look, I know we didn’t get along at the Garrison, and I’m not asking you to care about me now. But I and two of my friends went missing almost five months ago now. They found me in the desert a month ago but my friends are still missing and I have no memories of what happened, except I think I have one very brief memory of seeing you.

It’s totally possible I’m mistaken, but please, I’m begging you, if you know anything about anything that’s happened to me in the last five months, if you’ve even seen me at all, please tell me or tell the police. I wouldn’t ask if Hunk and Pidge weren’t still missing. It might be the only way we have to find them. Please.

Please.

–Lance

 

He agonized for a moment before pressing the send button and dropping the phone before he could change his mind, running his hands over his face.

            “Talking to someone special?”

            He jumped a mile at Louisa’s voice over his shoulder, whipping around with hands up as if to defend himself. She gave a small, amused smile.

            “You okay there, little bro?” she asked. Lance sucked in a deep breath.

            “You just startled me,” he said. Louisa nodded, crouching down and pulling her feet out from under her so she was sitting on the air mattress with him.

            “Have you remembered anything else, Lance?” she asked him softly. He glowered at the bedsheets, suddenly too reminiscent of the hospital.

            “If I had, you’d know about it.”

            “Has the therapist been any help?” she pressed. He shifted away from her, a pang of guilt hitting his chest for his missed appointment yesterday.

            “No,” he said. “Do we have to have this discussion now? It’s late.”

            “I’m just trying to help.”

            “You’re trying to help, Cal’s trying to help, Mamá and Papá are trying to help, maybe it might help if you all just gave me some time and space,” he snapped, and then sighed. “Sorry, I don’t mean it like that, I just… I’m frustrated.” Louisa rubbed circles on his back.

            “I know,” she murmured. “Just… remember if you want to talk, we’re all here, okay? And I’m your big sister, so I’m going to keep pestering you at least a little. It’s my job.” Lance sighed, drooping.

            “I did remember one thing. Sort of. I’m not even certain it was a memory. It might have been a dream.” Louisa’s hand clenched his shoulder.

            “What is it?” she asked.

            “Do you remember Keith Kogane?” She frowned.

            “That guy who got expelled after he beat up a professor? Sort of, why?”

            “I remember seeing his face. I think I was with him at some point during those months. I was hurt and he was helping me.” In the unlit apartment, the frown deepening into Louisa’s face seemed to carve shadows into her skin.

            “Did you tell Detective Hopkins?”

            “That was the first thing I did. I didn’t tell Cal. I didn’t want to go through a whole speculation session with him,” Lance admitted. “It was barely a glimpse and I wasn’t even entirely convinced it was real. It just seemed like too much to… But anyway, that’s who I was sending a message to. I have his email but that’s it. Now I just have to… hope he says something, I guess.” Louisa’s hand resumed her circles on Lance’s back.

            “I still believe we’ll find Hunk and Pidge, little bro. Don’t lose hope just yet.” She shoved at his shoulder. “But right now you should get sleep. Your memory certainly won’t come back with you dead on your feet.” He sighed, patting her arm in a goodnight gesture, and grabbed the headphones off his pillow. He pulled them back over his ears, shutting the outside world into silence again, lay on his back, and stared up at the ceiling, breathing slowly in the calm night. Louisa padded back to the couch and dropped onto it. He could still see his vision of Keith’s face, dancing before his eyes, its clarity unnerving.

 

*

 

            “Dammit!” Detective Hopkins slammed the phone down in frustration and rubbed his temples. That had been the last person on his list. No one knew where Keith Kogane was, or even who to ask. No one seemed to have spoken to him since he got booted from the Garrison over a year ago, including his damn foster family. From the sound of it, they hadn’t even tried to contact him after hearing the news, and he had never asked them for so much as a few nickels to do his laundry.

            “Bad news?” Cho asked, sidling up to his desk. Hopkins groaned.

            “We might have another missing kid on our hands. Except this one’s been gone for over a year and no one’s tried to find him in all that time.”

            “Keith Kogane?” she asked, leaning over to look at the mugshot on Hopkins’ computer. He nodded, taking a gulp of coffee and making a face at the tepid temperature.

            “Optimistic option: he got kicked out of the Garrison, had no interest in going back to a foster family that clearly has no interest in _him_ , found himself some apartment and a job at a carwash and is living a perfectly normal life somewhere.”

            “You’re not that much of an optimist,” Cho said, spinning a pencil in her fingers. Hopkins sighed, leaning forward on the desk.

            “You got that right,” he said. “I don’t know if I should issue an APB or what.”

            “Well, I can’t help you much with Kogane, but I do have some good news.”

            “What is it?” Hopkins asked, sitting straight up. “It’ll be a first since I heard that Sanchez was alive.”

            “So you remember how we couldn’t find a single person to contact for Gunderson? Parents out of the country and unreachable, at least according to the forms he filled out?”

            “Yeah?” Cho slapped a picture down on the table in front of Hopkins of a boy in a Garrison uniform. He frowned. “Yeah, that’s Gunderson’s picture. What about it?”

            “It’s not, though,” Cho said, grinning mischievously. “That’s Matthew Holt’s picture.” Hopkins peered suspiciously at his partner.

            “Matthew Holt, the guy who died in the Kerberos mission?” Cho nodded. “Why does he look like Pidge Gunderson?”

            “Because,” Cho said, “Pidge Gunderson isn’t a real person.” She paused for effect and Hopkins sighed, leaning back in his chair.

            “Cho, just explain,” he said. “What do you mean ‘Pidge Gunderson isn’t a real person’?” Cho chuckled.

            “I’m so glad you asked,” she said. “I am almost certain that Pidge Gunderson is really Katie Holt, Matt Holt’s little sister.”

            “But… why? And how?” Hopkins asked, shaking his head. She held up a finger to stop him.

            “Let me explain. We were so much more focused on Sanchez and Garrett the first time around because we had their families here asking frantic questions. There were people we could talk to who knew them, who could help us figure out where they might have gone or how we might find them. God knows Sanchez’s older siblings had plenty of their own ideas about how we should be running the investigation. We barely even looked at Gunderson because there was so little that we could do with so little information. But I always thought it was weird that there was _no one_ trying to find him, except the Garrison.

            “But when Sanchez brought up Kogane, I started looking back at what little we knew about the Kogane case and anything else going on at the Garrison around that time. The only thing I could find was that it happened less than a month after the Kerberos mission crashed and everyone on board died. I have no idea if that’s connected or not, but I saw Matt Holt’s picture and thought it looked too similar to just be a coincidence. So I looked up his family.

            “Now, here’s where it gets interesting. According to her mother, a couple months after the Kerberos mission, Katie suddenly accepted a scholarship from Skilton, that one they have for like kid geniuses since Katie was only fourteen. Her mother completely believed it, according to her Katie knew more about computers than anyone. So Katie, apparently, went off to Skilton, called her mother on the phone or sent her a message every couple weeks letting her know everything was going well. Except, the messages suddenly stopped coming. After she’d been trying to get through for a week or so with no success, she called Skilton, and Skilton tells her they’ve never heard of her daughter. So then she calls the police. As far as anyone could figure out, Katie Holt never set foot on Skilton’s campus or even applied for a scholarship.

            “But, Katie’s departure for Skilton lines up exactly with Pidge Gunderson’s arrival at the Garrison, and she sent her last message to her mother three days before Gunderson and the others vanished.” Cho folded her arms, looking pleased with herself. Hopkins scratched his head and the back of his neck absently, mulling it over.

            “I still don’t understand why. Why lie to her mother? Why lie to the Garrison? None of us ever suspected Gunderson’s documents of being phony, would she really have the hacking skills necessary to forge herself a new identity? At _fourteen_?” Cho threw up her hands.

            “Beats me. But come on, Todd, look at this.” She pulled up a missing poster for Katie Holt on his screen, next to a picture of Pidge Gunderson and a picture of Matthew Holt. “They’re dead ringers for each other. Bad choice of words. But look. What are the chances that this girl goes missing and some guy with no real trace of his life story that looks _exactly_ like her _also_ goes missing at the same time? Maybe she had help with the hacking. Maybe she didn’t think her mother would let her go to the Garrison after what happened to her father and brother. But this is a _lead_.” Hopkins ran a hand over his face.

            “Alright, let’s go talk to Katie’s mother and—”

            “Excuse me, am I interrupting?” Both Cho and Hopkins jumped and turned to see a woman in a Garrison uniform, double gold stripes on her shoulders indicating her rank.

            “Um… no,” Cho said. “Sorry… who are you?”

            “My name is Captain Marietta Seitz. I am here to help with your questions in regard to our missing students.” Cho and Hopkins glanced at each other.

            “Where’s Lieutenant Meyers?” Cho asked. “He’s normally the person who does this.” Captain Seitz’s expression did not shift a muscle.

            “He’s unavailable this week, and the Garrison wants to see Garrett and Gunderson found as quickly as possible, just as you do.” Cho and Hopkins glanced at each other. Cho gave him just the slightest shake of her head. “How can I be of assistance?”

            “We were actually hoping to ask you about a different student,” Hopkins said, shutting off his computer screen and pulling out a chair for Captain Seitz, who sat in it stiffly. “Keith Kogane. There’s a chance he’s mixed up in this somehow.” The slightest frown creased Captain Seitz’s forehead.

            “Keith Kogane was expelled over a year ago now. He’s no longer affiliated with the Garrison.”

            “Yes, but do you know where he went after that?” Captain Seitz shrugged.

            “Home, I assume.”

            “He did not,” Cho said. “In fact, we have no idea where he is. He might be missing along with the rest of them. We were hoping you might tell us a bit more about what happened that got Kogane expelled.” Captain Seitz’s face betrayed no expression, but she sat silently for a moment, mulling it over.

            “I believe that is privileged information,” she said. “However, given the current circumstances, I suppose I can tell you a little. Takashi Shirogane, the pilot on the Kerberos mission, was a mentor to Keith. Keith took his death exceptionally hard. He became violent and unreasonable, lashing out at everyone around him. When he landed someone in the hospital it became clear he could not be allowed to stay on at Galaxy Garrison. We expelled him and as far as I know no one from the Garrison has spoken to him since.” Cho’s eyes narrowed.

            “Do you have any suggestions for how to get in touch with him?” Hopkins asked. “Anything at all?” Captain Seitz turned towards him.

            “I’m sorry, Detective. We don’t keep contact information for students no longer at the Garrison, let alone someone we’ve expelled.” The slight crease reappeared between her eyebrows. “If I may ask, what reason do you have to suspect that he is in any way connected to the other three?” Hopkins saw Cho stiffen in his peripheral vision and tried to shrug nonchalantly.

            “Lance came in a few days ago to tell us he thought he remembered Keith being with him at some point, but that’s the only piece of his memory he seems to have recovered,” he said. The frown on Captain Seitz’s face smoothed over.

            “Lance is still in town?” she asked. Hopkins nodded. “We assumed he’d gone back to Cuba with his parents. Hopefully this means he’ll be returning as a student in the near future.” She stood. “If that will be all?”

            They shook hands and parted ways, leaving Cho and Hopkins standing by his desk, watching until they were sure she had left the building before Cho turned to him.

            “Seems a hell of a coincidence that both Kogane and Gunderson are connected to the Kerberos mission, doesn’t it?” she asked. Hopkins hummed noncommittally.

            “We’ll talk to Mrs. Holt on Monday. Meanwhile, why do you think the Garrison sent us _her_?” Cho shook her head.

            “Who knows why the Garrison does anything?” she said. “Working with them feels like stepping into an episode of X-Files.”

 

*

 

            Lance felt his heart jolt into his mouth when he woke up to an email notification on his phone. Louisa was snoring softly on the couch still, and even Cal was taking the morning to sleep in after their late night movie marathon, so the apartment was still and quiet, grey with soft morning light, as he pressed a shaking finger to his email app.

            His spirits plummeted when he saw it wasn’t from Keith, but someone with a Garrison email address. He opened the email anyway, scanning through it, and then stopped, frowned, and read it over again more closely.

 

**To:** Lance Sanchez

**From:** Akemi Ito

**Subject:** Memory Therapy

Dear Mr. Sanchez,

I don’t believe we met during your time at Galaxy Garrison. I am Dr. Ito, one of the psychologists employed by the Garrison in order to help mentally prepare our students for the rigors of space flight, as well as provide any mental health advice or therapist referrals that may be necessary to the general student body. I studied memory loss extensively back in medical school as it was a particular interest of mine, and I may have some ideas about how to help with your situation. Even though you are not currently enrolled as a student of the Garrison, I would be happy to offer my assistance, if you feel it would be useful. Please use the link below to schedule an appointment.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ito

 

            Louisa’s snoring had gone silent behind him, and Lance looked over his shoulder to see her propped up on the armrest of the couch and watching him. He silently held the phone out and let her read the message.

            “Why would he only send this to me now?” he asked. “I mean, I was on the news, I feel like most people know what happened.” Louisa shrugged.

            “Beats me,” she said. “You going to make an appointment?” Lance chewed his lip.

            “I guess? I mean… what do I have to lose?”

            “Sounds good to me,” she said, holding the phone back out to him. “Just let me know when you’re coming up.”

            “Yeah, sure,” he replied absently. His finger hovered over the date selection for a moment before he scrolled down and selected a date a week from Monday. He wanted a chance to take a look at those documents in Kent’s shack first. Then he’d go see what Dr. Ito had to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M ALIVE (sort of, I'm sick as hell, but I'm done with classes, just finals and my thesis defense left to survive)
> 
> Thanks so much for being patient and waiting for this chapter! It was a monster to write, but I hoped you enjoyed it! Please leave a comment if you would like to - I adore hearing from you all!


	6. Chapter 6

            Life must be a lot easier in movies, Lance thought, for two reasons: soundtracks and montages. Soundtracks, because they made anything you did dramatic and important. A good soundtrack was an instant confidence boost. Walking back into Kent’s hut on Monday would be a badass and super cool moment with some rock music playing in the background, panning over him driving Kent’s bike across the desert before cutting to the hut’s interior. The camera would probably shoot him coming through the door with the sun backlighting him, and a light breeze ruffling his hair. It would put on just a touch of slow-mo to emphasize how hot he looked. Then the rock music would carry over into a montage where he would stare thoughtfully at lots of pages and books. There would be a shot of him sitting on the couch, leaning over a book, his head in his hands. Another would show him chewing a pencil eraser and scribbling something out, before fading into a shot of him pacing back and forth reading out of a book that he would throw down in frustration. The music would take a turn for the triumphant, panning across the conspiracy board as he pulled a thread across it and stuck a pin in a map, and then cut to him flipping through the papers, and finally show him circle something several times before tossing his pencil down in victory.

            In reality, he stumbled through Kent’s door sweaty and sandy from the ride over, took one look at the reams of paper awaiting him, and nearly walked back out. Only the need to find Hunk and Pidge made him grit his teeth, pull the door closed behind him, and face the piles of Kent’s disjointed ramblings. The faux leather journal sat on the table where he’d left it on Friday. He slowly sat down on the couch, picked it up, and began to read.

            It quickly became evident that the journal alone did not contain enough detailed information to be self-explanatory, and Kent hadn’t exactly kept neat records of what other pages of calculations, maps, brainstorming, and outside material he was referencing. It became a sort of scavenger hunt. Kent would mention something in the journal like:

> Found an article on the drawings. Radiocarbon dating + analysis of materials. Much more spread through time than I thought.

Then there would be a fifteen-minute pause while Lance dug through piles of photocopied articles until he found one that might plausibly match up with the journal entry. Then he’d read the article, squinting through Kent’s messy annotations. Sometimes, that led to another page of brainstorming or calculations, taking him down a daisy chain of pages until he finally hit a dead end and went back to the next journal entry.

            The pages were scribbled over with errant self-notes and reminders. “Do laundry tomorrow morning.” “Flashlight battery needs charging, leave it in the sun this afternoon.” “Out of frozen pizza.” Lance lingered on these, curious at these tiny insights into Kent’s life. As he got further and further into the journal, Kent’s writing slipped more and more into a personal tone, his guard brought down by weeks on end with no company but his pen and a blank page. Occasionally, he strayed off into anecdotes.

> Mac and cheese is all that’s left in the freezer. Guess that’s dinner again tonight. Have I mentioned I’m sick of mac and cheese? I am so fucking sick of mac and cheese. I didn’t think I could ever get sick of mac and cheese. I ate it for like a week after running away from foster family number four. That and the day-old bagels you could get for $2 at the bakery. But now I don’t ever want to see the stuff again.

Lance briefly buried his face in the arm of the sofa before picking up the pencil and writing his response in the margin: “EAT SOMETHING GREEN LITERALLY ANYTHING JUST EAT A VEGETABLE.” Taking a deep breath in and out, he returned to his reading.

            When Kent wasn’t trying to be brusque and professional, his writing could be surprisingly funny and amicable. Sure, Lance supposed he was a bit prickly, and he sometimes seemed like he had an anger management issue, but Lance found himself smiling and chuckling more often than he had expected from the first few entries. He didn’t actually sound like a mad hermit conspiracy theorist, at least not most of the time. In fact, sometimes he sounded so normal Lance almost forgot he was just writing notes, and that Kent wasn’t actually there.

> I’ve been staring through this old telescope for five hours and all the stars look the same. Why did I ever think this was a good idea? All I can see are white dots, white dots everywhere, like some kind of inverted Rorschach test.

Lance grinned, already pressing his pencil to the paper to write his reply. “Oh man, you have no idea. I spent an entire weekend with my eye stuck against a telescope and poring over star charts, I literally got five hours of sleep the entire weekend, trying to study for this massive astronomy test at the Garrison, I’m honestly surprised I didn’t go blind. Hunk had to drag me away the night before the test.” He stopped abruptly, out of room, and sat back. Despite what he knew, he was having trouble adjusting his mental image of Kent to a seventeen-year-old kid. He would remember that fact abruptly and painfully, reminded of it by moments like these. They could have been classmates, friends even, if things had been different.

            “Do you think we could have been friends, Kent?” Lance asked the empty hut. “You don’t seem like the outgoing type, but we probably could have gotten along.” He tilted his head back, staring out past the ceiling. “We both love the stars,” he murmured.

            Slowly, ever so slowly, over the course of a week he started to assemble a picture of what Kent had been learning. All of it focused on these cave drawings that told various stories about a blue lion. Kent took up entire notebooks trying to construct a single narrative, but he didn’t seem to have succeeded. Most of them seemed to agree that the blue lion had come from the sky, although at least one of them said it came from the ocean. Some said it was a gift from the gods while others claimed it was a monster that would rise and bring the apocalypse. The only common thread was that everyone agreed that the lion was waiting for something, some kind of “arrival,” if Kent’s interpretation of the drawings and symbols was correct.

            The personal entries and notes grew less frequent when Kent had something concrete to focus on. Lance had a suspicion that it was because Kent just forgot to do things like eat and sleep and bathe when he had something to work on, but he was too sucked into trying to pick apart the mystery himself to reprimand Kent. The anecdotes still popped up occasionally, though, sometimes jarring in their suddenness.

> My hand’s finally stopped shaking enough that I can write, and if I don’t do something I feel like my head’s going to explode but I can’t work because I can’t concentrate so here’s a diary entry I guess.
> 
> I was in town restocking on groceries and I thought I saw S across the street. It’s stupid, I know, when you miss people you think you see them places but they aren’t really there. But it really looked like him, with the Garrison uniform and everything. And I just didn’t think. I shouted after him, I dropped my grocery bag on the pavement and I ran straight into the street. I think I nearly got run over but I don’t even really know. And I grabbed his shoulder but of course it wasn’t actually him, just some Garrison schmuck, but then he was squinting at me kind of weird so I just took off running because the last thing I need is the motherfucking Garrison after me. I left my groceries there, and I didn’t even go for where I had hidden the bike, I just ran into the city and sort of hid in the crowd for a while. I finally realized I hadn’t been followed and went back to the bike and came back here but I didn’t have my groceries anymore of course and I’m pretty much out of stuff here. I’ll have to go back into town tomorrow to buy food so I’ll lose two days of work but I can’t do it tonight.
> 
> Wish I’d figured out how to buy some beer or whatever. Getting drunk would make tonight a hell of a lot better.

Lance looked up from the page to the conspiracy board, where Takashi Shirogane’s obituary picture stared back at him. He frowned, tapping his pencil against the page.

            “Is S Shiro?” he asked the empty air. He squinted at the page. “How would you know Shiro, Kent? You have a ton of stolen Garrison electrojunk, but there were no Garrison uniforms with your clothes. Plus, with all your ranting against the Garrison, it seems pretty unlikely you’d ever go there voluntarily.” He shook his head. “Whatever. You knew Shiro. Okay. Did Shiro know about… this?” He glanced around the shack. “No, because you wrote ‘S is gone’ on the first page. But did he know you were into…” Lance glanced over at the stack of books on alien cover-up conspiracies. He’d set those aside as a last resort. He threw up his hands. “Oh hell, what do I know, maybe Shiro was best friends with telescope man too. It’s not like I ever actually had a one-on-one conversation with the guy. Maybe the real purpose of the Kerberos mission was to find aliens. How would I know?” He shook his head again and picked up Kent’s journal with grim determination.

            The personal anecdotes stopped abruptly after that. The entries that followed were stilted in their impersonal formality. Lance spent an entire day with only academic articles and particularly knotty calculations to untangle, and not a single word from Kent on any of them that wasn’t a formal annotation. He went back to the apartment that night and collapsed onto the air mattress, his head pounding. He fell asleep before Cal even got home.

            Almost a month after Kent’s encounter with not-Shiro, there was finally another personal entry, longer than any of the others Lance had read so far. 

> Well, the bike broke down. Something in the engine overheated and just blew right out. Good news is, I fixed it. I think. Bad news is, engineering was never my strong point and it took the entire afternoon. So now the bike is fine, but the sun’s just about to set and the battery isn’t charged. I’m near the far edge of the caves. I *might* be able to walk back from here if I really have to, but it would be a long walk and I drank most of my water sitting in the sun fixing this dumbass bike. And I don’t have any food with me, like an idiot. Note to self: always bring food when going into desert from now on.
> 
> On the balance of things, it’s probably safer to stay here overnight than try to walk back. Tomorrow I might break down and have to walk back, but I might also be able to just ride back home. If I go tonight I definitely have to walk, and I have to abandon the bike and come back for it tomorrow. And here at least I can take some shelter in the caves. So I’m here overnight.

> I guess I’ll try and sleep a little. Don’t know how else I’m going to pass the night.

Lance took up the top corner to write, “Yikes, that must’ve been cold” before flipping the page.

> THE DESERT’S FUCKING COLD.

Lance burst into sniggering laughter, covering his mouth with his hand. He had to take two full minutes before he recovered his breath enough to write, “No shit,” in the corner. He put the book down to laugh for another few seconds before he managed to get his mirth under control and go back to reading, a grin still stretching his cheeks.

> I got in an hour or two of sleep, I think, but woke up shivering. A cold rock in a desert cave defeats even my ability to sleep anywhere, I guess. So here I am. Freezing my fingers off to write something because I got bored pacing back and forth waiting for dawn.

There was an odd little doodle at the bottom of the page. It looked like a weird jagged S, or maybe some kind of thick lightning bolt. Lance skipped over it. Probably one of the endless incomprehensible symbols Kent talked about finding in these caves.

> I pace until my legs start getting too tired or I get too damn bored and then I sit down and write. Just trying to distract myself from the cold and the sand. I’m getting really tired of sand being the only view out my window every morning. Feels like I’m on fucking Tatooine.

Lance smiled as he leaned down to write along the edge: “Hey! You know Star Wars! Guess you can’t be too much of a hermit. There’s hope for you yet!”

> I used to think getting completely away from everyone, just living by myself in the middle of nowhere like this, would be a huge relief. I thought that was all I wanted. Especially after I got out of foster family number four. I was so ready to just be alone. Better that than live with people who

The sentence cut off there. Half a letter had been started, but it was scribbled out, and then Kent had started a new paragraph.

> And it was, for a while. But, God help me, I think I’m getting lonely. I blame S. He was the first person who actually seemed like he listened to me since Dad left. For once, talking to people wasn’t dangerous. I actually liked talking to S. And I think he liked talking to me. Talking to him felt safe. I guess I got comfortable being around people again. Or for the first time, I don’t know. Anyway, I was starting to feel like I maybe didn’t have to run away and hide. But then something happened, and S is– dead, or gone or something but the point is it all went horribly wrong and the Garrison is covering up something if only I could prove it and I can’t trust anyone. So I did what I’ve always wanted to do, and I ran away. I went off by myself and hid and I’m out here safely alone where I only have to trust myself. But now I’m lonely because life fucking hates me. Because for the first time since Dad, I have someone to miss.

Lance put the book down, letting out a slow whistle. He leaned back into the couch. The hut was quiet, with only the faint sound of wind outside. He reached behind his head and twisted his finger in the sheet curtain.

            “Kent…” he said, but then trailed off, because what was he supposed to say? He’d never actually met the guy, just broken into his home and gone trawling through all his most personal papers. Now he’d found something definitely too personal, and definitely not meant for his eyes. “What should I have expected, eh?” he asked. He tilted his head back to stare at the cracked ceiling paint.

            A shrill beep interrupted his reverie. He jumped, knocking a few pages off the table as he scrambled for his phone. He really needed to change the settings off of default on this thing. He was not living with this as his ringtone. He finally got it in his hand and saw the icon of the police department. Detective Hopkins was calling him. For a second, his finger hovered over the “answer” button, but then he swallowed and carefully set the phone back down on the table as if it were a dangerous insect. What if Hopkins asked where he was? What would he say?

            He watched it ring and ring until it stopped. The screen flipped to show him a missed call, and a few seconds later, a message. He picked it up and swiped open the message. Detective Hopkins’ face shimmered on the screen.

            “Mr. Sanchez. Call me back when you get a chance. I have some questions for you about Pidge Gunderson that I’d like you to come down to the station to answer if possible. Thanks.” The message ended there. Lance blinked in surprise, frowning. What could they want to ask him about Pidge? He didn’t even know Pidge all that well, not really. The guy had been antisocial to say the least. The most Lance had ever gotten out of him was that he really liked computers and Hunk was pretty sure he had a girlfriend.

            He’d call back that evening, from Cal’s apartment, he decided. Until then, he had to keep on reading.

*

            Lance sucked in a breath when he flipped the page. There was only one thing written on it, in massive numbers, circled several times. That damning date, the same day he and Hunk and Pidge had gone missing, stared out at him accusingly. He set the book down slowly. In his previous scavenger hunts for various calculations and maps and whatnot, he’d assembled a stack of pages that had that date on them, setting them carefully at the edge of the table. He pulled that stack toward him with hesitant fingers, picking through it, unsure where to start. Finally, he pulled out a sheet at random and began to read.

            Kent’s cramped notes eventually began to reveal what Lance already half-suspected: the date came from the drawings in the caves. He’d eventually managed to decode enough of the symbols to realize there was actually a specific date embedded in them. Teasing what that date actually _was_ out of the bizarre semi-religious meanderings about moon cycles and nonsensical symbols gave Lance a headache just trying to follow it. He couldn’t imagine Kent sitting here patiently picking apart every half-eroded cave drawing in the hopes it would give him something remotely useful.

            It came out to the same date every time, with almost frightening consistency. Sometimes there were painfully long calculations involved about the position of the North Star or a long back and forth about whether a particular symbol meant a rising sun or a half moon, but whether it took Kent one page or fifty, he always ended up back at this date. The only problem was that Lance still had absolutely no idea what it meant. And neither, it seemed, did Kent.

            Nothing in the journal after that was particularly useful. There were a few more pieces of trivia about the cave drawings, and Kent tried and failed to identify the source of some of the earliest symbols, but none of it seemed particularly significant. Eventually, as the entries drew close to that date, Kent seemed to more or less give up on his research. Instead, he became focused on preparing, even if he didn’t know what he was preparing for. He fixed up his bike, which had apparently been listing a little when he took right turns. He bought a half dozen cans of gasoline and spark plugs and when Lance realized what he was trying to make he just put the pencil down and walked out of the shack for a few minutes, not sure whether to laugh or bury himself in the sand because he was trying to fix his lost memories using the conspiracy notes of a hermit madman who put together homemade explosives because “I don’t know, maybe I’ll need it.” (Although, Lance noted, he’d found no evidence of gasoline or spark plugs in the hut, so God only knew what that meant. Perhaps Kent was dead because he’d managed to blow himself up.) He also wrote about setting up a telescope on a bluff nearby so that he’d be able to watch the skies that night. The last entry in the journal was on the date itself. All it said was:

> And now I wait.

After that, there was nothing else. There were a few scattered books and pages of brainstorming he hadn’t read all the way through, but it seemed like he knew pretty much everything Kent had written down by now.

            Lance, lacking anything else truly productive to do, figured out what bluff Kent was talking about and rode the bike to it. A telescope sat there, its lens cap still off, the glass caked with sand. An odd feeling beneath his feet made him step aside and realize there was a blanket buried in the sand next to it. Anything else that might have been there was long since buried or blown away. Lance stood on the bluff, staring around, the hot air searing his lungs and drying his eyes. The desert stretched on nearly as far as the eye could see, the town and the Garrison just barely visible in the distance, through the shimmering heat.

            “So… did you actually just get beamed into an alien spaceship?” he asked the air. Sand blew up against his ankles, sticking to them. The telescope up on the bluff here confirmed, even more than the fridge and the dirty boxers in his attic, that whatever had happened to Kent had been sudden. No one just left a telescope out in the desert unless there was an emergency. On a whim, Lance brushed the sand off the glass and stuck his eye to the eyepiece. He reeled back a second later in confusion. The telescope was pointed directly at the Garrison.

            He ended up folding the telescope up in the blanket and carrying them back to the hut with him. He found he’d forgotten his phone on the table. A missed call notification stared at him accusingly and he groaned. He’d completely forgotten his appointment with his therapist again. Not that he thought going to the therapist was actually particularly valuable, but if he wasn’t careful eventually Cal or his parents would find out he’d been missing the appointments, and that would start raising questions Lance would have no idea how to answer.

            “Well, it’s looking more and more like you’re either dead, or you’re living your dream and actually got abducted by aliens, Kent,” Lance told the empty hut. He paused, the picture he’d found upstairs flashing before his eyes. His chest ached at the memory of the little boy’s faded toothy grin. “I really do hope you’re not dead,” he murmured. He glanced out the window, uncovered in the late evening now that it wasn’t quite so hot. The setting sun turned the sky into blazing streaks of pink and red. The cottony ghost of a half moon had already risen, filtered in odd colors through the atmosphere. “Maybe I can believe you’re up there in the stars.”

            The moment held for a few seconds, quiet and suspended, before Lance exhaled, setting the telescope down in a corner, and grabbing his phone and water bottle. He’d have to find some way to pass the weekend, and then go see whatever Dr. Ito had to say on Monday, before he’d be able to come back to the shack. He paused on his way out, glancing back, thinking he heard the creak of a floorboard or the hinge on the kitchen door, but it was just the wood under his own foot.

            “I’ll see you, Kent,” he said.

            The air in the desert was cold by the time he made it back to the outskirts of the city, the almost vanished sun giving him only a warm circle on his back that felt more like a memory than real heat.

*

            The TV audio was fuzzy, cutting in and out as the picture pixelated and then fixed itself over and over, more or less in time with the howling gusts of wind outside. A particularly loud static burst made Chuck open his eyes, blinking blearily, squinting through the pixilation to try and read the scrolling headlines. Nothing happening but the weather. He reached out, fumbling for the remote, knocked it to the ground, stretched down, grabbed it, and pushed the power button. The TV went black. He dropped his head back onto the sofa cushion with a groan. Judging from the sound of the wind, he’d been right to stay home tonight. It was way too cold and windy to sit outside with a telescope.

            He pushed himself up to sitting, pulling the blanket along with him, wrapping it around his shoulders like a cape. He reached out for his phone and scrolled through his notifications. He swiped junk emails and phishing texts into the trash as he yawned and scratched behind his ear. His finger paused over one, a comment notification on one of his discussion boards about the Garrison’s past cover-ups. He vaguely recognized the username as one of the newer commenters. The disastrous Kerberos mission had sent a slew of people raging to the internet with countless questions about what the Garrison might be hiding. The comment started with a link to an article. His finger hovered over the delete button, figuring whatever this guy had sent, he’d probably read it already, but then he frowned, clicking open the app to read the full message.

> Akira Kogane??? You’ve probably all already seen this article but can anyone tell me if we think it’s a real cover-up or not? Maybe I’m jumping ahead of myself but that picture looks a hell of a lot like KEITH Kogane, who got kicked out of the Garrison right after the Kerberos mission, and I’m pretty sure that kid was living with a foster family. Any connection??? Is Akira his dad?
> 
> That guy was always a loner but I’ve talked to Garrison students and I don’t think anyone has any idea where he went or what happened to him after he was expelled. Could be nothing, but…

 Chuck sat back, twisting the ring on his thumb. He typed “Keith Kogane” into his phone and whistled at the search results. He vaguely remembered the story. It had been briefly on the news almost a year ago, something about a Garrison teacher being in the hospital after being attacked by a student. At the time, though, all his discussion boards had been so consumed by the Kerberos mission debacle that a student getting kicked out for disciplinary issues had seemed pale and uninteresting by comparison. Akira Kogane, though, was one of the most suspicious and inscrutable bits of Garrison conspiracy history. They must not have said Keith’s full name on the news, or he would surely have noticed the Kogane connection. As it was, he wanted to kick himself for not trying to talk to him sooner. Anyone booted out of the Garrison would surely have dirt that they’d be willing to share.

            He stood up, the blanket still wrapped around him, and made his way to the kitchen. He stuck a plate of pizza bites in the microwave and woke up his computer. He might or might not be able to find Keith Kogane on the internet himself, but if he couldn’t, he knew who to ask.

* 

            Lance swallowed past his dry throat, annoyed at himself for his pounding heart. It was just the Garrison. He’d lived here for over a year. It shouldn’t scare him anymore. Perhaps it was just the looming sense that Iverson was about to step out from around the corner and reprimand him for his failures in the simulator. Or maybe being there in his normal clothes rather than his cadet’s uniform was making him feel too visible, out of place and intruding. He shook his shoulders a little, trying to make the tension fall away, and marched into the building.

            It looked identical to how he remembered, all boxy hallways and high-ceilinged atriums in white plastic. Everything was clinically clean and organized to perfection. Cadets and lieutenants strolled the hallways chatting, comparing class notes, or holding holopads and frowning over simulator booking times. A strange rush of homesickness hit him in the chest. He was home, and he wasn’t. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the familiarity of these halls – and yet they made him ache for Cuba, for his own real bed, for bedtime stories with Manuel and helping Mamá in the kitchen. He felt Hunk’s absence more acutely than he had since he’d woken up in the hospital. Hunk had an almost magical ability to notice when Lance’s bouts of homesickness hit him. Sometimes he’d be working on homework, his pencil trembling just slightly, and suddenly Hunk’s hand would be gently rubbing his back. He’d never say anything unless Lance did, but he might offer him a bite of whatever snack he was eating at that moment, and they’d exchange smiles.

            Blinking back his memories, Lance took a deep breath and forged ahead into the crowd of Garrison students. One or two of them, he thought, were watching him out of the corner of their eyes, but he ignored them. He glanced down at his phone to double check the room number Dr. Ito had sent him. Not watching where he was going, he almost ran smack into Iverson.

            He jumped back almost a foot, heart pounding in his chest, snapping to attention, his hand unable to decide whether it was supposed to come up to a salute or not. Iverson had stopped dead in the middle of the hallway, staring at him, his one good eye round with surprise. After a few seconds, Lance recovered his breath enough to remember he wasn’t about to get chewed out for skipping class, and after a few more seconds his heart had slowed enough for him to register how strange it was that Iverson had yet to say anything at all.

            “Commander?” he said.

            “Lance!” Iverson gasped, and then suddenly seemed to recover himself. “Why are you here?” he barked. “I thought you’d gone home to Cuba.” Lance frowned.

            “…No, no I never went back to Cuba, sir,” he said. “I stuck around in case they learned anything about what happened to Hunk or Pidge.” Iverson grunted his acknowledgement.

            “Are you back as a student then?” Lance shook his head.

            “I’m here to see Dr., uh, Dr. Akemi Ito. He sent me an email – he thinks he might be able to help get my memory back.”

            “You still don’t remember anything?” Lance shook his head again.

            “Not really.” An odd moment of hesitation flickered across Iverson’s eye, when a woman with long blond hair in a double gold-striped uniform walked up. Iverson started at the sight of her.

            “You must be Lance Sanchez,” she said, smiling. “Dr. Ito mentioned you were coming to see him.”

            “Uh, yeah, that’s…” Lance trailed off, squinting at her. The vision came back to him suddenly, a fuzzy view of this woman through a pair of binoculars, standing in front of a saluting guard, a holopad under her arm. “You!” he gasped, pointing at her. “You were— I _remember_ you! You were there!” The tiniest frown creased her forehead.

            “I’m sorry?” she asked.

            “I think I saw you when I disappeared,” Lance said, unable to tear his eyes away from her. The frown deepened just slightly. “From a distance. I don’t remember where, but I was looking at… something…” He trailed off, frustrated. “I’m sorry, I still don’t really remember anything.”

            “I’m afraid I’m not really sure when or where you could have seen me,” the woman said. The frown between her eyes was gone. “But that’s why you’re here. Let me take you down to Dr. Ito’s office.” Lance nodded numbly, furious at his sudden burst of memory that had somehow still failed to tell him anything at all.

            “Captain Seitz—” Iverson began.

            “Yes, Commander?” the woman asked. Iverson’s good eye narrowed almost imperceptibly.

            “I’ll see you at lunch,” he said. His eye raked over Lance one last time, making him feel naked and like he needed to confess to not cleaning under his fingernails, and then he was gone. Captain Seitz smiled at Lance.

            “Shall we?” she asked. Lance fell into step beside her.

            Dr. Ito’s office was on the lowest level of the Garrison, tucked away in a quiet hallway with a few other errant offices, a bathroom with an Out of Order sign pasted on the front, and a storage closet with a broken door. Captain Seitz rapped sharply at the door before Lance got a chance, and pulled it open at the faint “Come in.” She held it open for Lance, smiling.

            A man – presumably Dr. Ito – was seated at a wide wooden desk, tapping away at his computer. He peered over his glasses as Lance entered. Captain Seitz followed him, shutting the door behind him. Lance felt abruptly claustrophobic. Two bookcases towered from floor to ceiling on the walls on either side of him. There was a second door behind his desk, metal, with a fingerprint scanner. Lance stared at it.

            “You must be Lance Sanchez,” Dr. Ito said. He nodded to the armchair in front of his desk. “Take a seat.” Lance sat, slowly, on the edge of the chair. His heart beat unevenly, strange anxiety tickling the edge of his brain. Captain Seitz came to stand by the desk.

            “Mr. Sanchez,” she said. “I must admit we have not been entirely candid about the reasons we have asked you to come. The Garrison knows more about your disappearance – as well as that of Mr. Gunderson and Mr. Garrett – than we have been able, for matters of international security, to tell the police. These matters can only be safely communicated in person, and so when we found out you were in town, we were hoping to arrange a meeting with you without raising suspicion.”

            “O…kay?” Lance said. His eyes flickered between Dr. Ito, who had gone back to typing and was apparently ignoring the entire conversation, and Captain Seitz, whose gaze was fixed on him with an almost frightening intensity.

            “Mr. Sanchez. It is imperative, for your safety, for your friends’ safety, and indeed for the safety of the entire planet, that what you are about to learn remains classified. Were you not directly involved – and possibly still in danger – we would never share this information with you. Do you understand? You may not tell anyone about the true nature of this meeting, including your own family.”

            “I understand,” Lance said faintly. His head and his heart were pounding in rhythm with each other. He tried to wet his lips but even his tongue felt dry.

            “Very well,” she said. “Follow me.” Lance stood up out of the chair. His legs felt strange underneath him, as if they might not really be there, as if he was simply floating above the ground. Dr. Ito glanced up and gave Captain Seitz a nod as she walked to the door behind his desk. She pressed her thumb to the fingerprint scanner and Lance heard bolts slide back. He followed her, his gaze lingering for a moment on Dr. Ito, who had already returned to his work.

            The door led to a long, dimly lit hallway. Lance blinked, trying to adjust his eyes as he followed Captain Seitz down to the door at the far end. It opened to reveal a room reminiscent of a conference room, with a long metal table surrounded by chairs. Movement caught Lance’s eye and he turned towards the head of the table where someone was standing, impossibly tall. He yelped and stumbled backward, adrenaline spiking through his veins at the sight of a monster with purple skin and long white hair. It smiled, revealing unnaturally sharp teeth.

            “Hello, Lance,” it said. “My name is Prince Lotor. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DID YOU GUESS
> 
> HOW SURPRISED WERE YOU I NEED TO KNOW
> 
> (Also, for the record, [this](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/161871710607/its-not-an-oc-if-she-technically-appears-on) is Captain Marietta Seitz, in case it wasn't clear)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so sorry I left you sitting on that cliffhanger for so long!! Well, I'm not sorry about the cliffhanger ;P But I am sorry I made you all wait. Doing stage combat 8 hours a day does not leave much time or energy for writing
> 
> Also-- as of SDCC 2017, I am now officially not canon-compliant (because we know now that Lance is the youngest sibling), and I'm betting I will only have to move further away from canon once S3 airs. I was hoping to get this fic written before S3 came out, but alas. Still, I'm hoping that you guys don't mind if things are a bit different than canon? It won't stop you from reading the fic, right?
> 
> Anyway, I'M BACK! Please enjoy

            Lance felt light-headed. He was acutely, painfully hyperaware of everything he could feel, like his sense of touch had been dialed to eleven. The floor pressed hard and unforgiving through his shoes, his cotton shirt rubbed softly against his skin, and cool air kissed his wrists where his jacket sleeves ended. His pulse pounded harshly against his neck and his lungs felt tight. Every instinct he had screamed _RUN RUN RUN_. He trembled. Captain Seitz closed the door behind her.

            “Don’t panic, Mr. Sanchez,” she ordered. Lance didn’t dare take his eyes off Lotor long enough to look at her. “Prince Lotor will not hurt you. He is an alien, a species named Galra. He is here working with the Garrison to establish Earth’s first contact with alien species throughout the universe.”

            “You have a lovely planet,” Lotor said politely. Lance felt a chill creep down his spine at the way Lotor’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “An extraordinary amount of water.” Lance struggled to find his voice. It so rarely deserted him that the struggle itself sent another spike of panic through his chest. Finally, with a squeak and a crack, he managed to stutter out:

            “You’re— you’re… an alien.” Lotor looked amused.

            “Indeed,” he said. Lance sucked in massive breaths, trying to slow his racing heart.

            “Okay. I’m talking to an alien. Okay. But why…” He trailed off as the realization hit him. A hysterical laugh bubbled up between his lips. “Oh God. You— you think— that we were abducted by aliens. That’s why no one could find us. You think we were— like telescope man with his conspiracies— what happened, were we beamed up into the sky by little green men? Did they steal some cows too?” The slightest hint of confusion flashed across Lotor’s eyes, but he smoothed it over.

            “Why don’t you take a seat, Lance?” he asked. Lance did not like the way Lotor tasted his name, rolling it around his mouth for just a second too long. The insistent voice in his head cried out _RUN RUN RUN_. He almost did. He almost turned and bolted, desperate to escape this room, to put as much distance between him and this purple monster as possible. But Hunk and Pidge were still missing. So instead he dropped like a stone into the nearest chair, not sure if he was relieved to be off his shaking legs or just more terrified that he was no longer immediately ready to run.

            “Captain Seitz, perhaps you better explain…? I’ve only recently arrived, after all,” Lotor said, taking his own seat and resting his chin on his fingertips.

            “Very well,” Captain Seitz said. “The Garrison established first contact with aliens almost eighteen years ago when one crash landed here. There had been limited incidents before that, but this was the first time an alien arrived with a translation device that allowed proper communication, and the first time we actually had the technology to jerry-rig something capable of interstellar transmissions.

            “Since that time, the Garrison has been establishing contact with several alien races. We have primarily been in cautious negotiations with Prince Lotor’s people, the Galra Empire.”

            “Empire?” Lance asked, finally tearing his eyes off Lotor to glance at Captain Seitz. She nodded curtly. Lotor spread his hands in an open gesture.

            “Empire is such an ugly word in your history,” he said. “Our goal is unification and peace, not subjugation.”

            “But you’re a prince.” Lance almost jumped at hearing his own voice, surprisingly steady. “Your Empire has monarchs. Meaning you rule by birth, not election.” Lotor smiled and his smile was all teeth.

            “I can give you a lesson in the niceties of Galran politics later, if you really want me to, but trust me that it is not quite that simple.”

            “A year and a half ago, we sent three of our best and brightest to space, ostensibly on a scientific mission to Kerberos,” Captain Seitz continued. “This was only a cover-up for their real mission: to become ambassadors to the Galra. We were hoping, should they be successful, that we might finally be ready to inform the rest of the world of what we knew without fear that we would immediately spark an interstellar war. However, there were complications.” She paused briefly and Lance’s eyes flickered to her. “A race called the Alteans caught wind of our planned negotiations.”

            “The Alteans are a dangerous people,” Lotor said. “They have a natural ability to manipulate quintessence, which gives them immense power. Power which they have used to commit unspeakable horrors. They have meddled in the forces of life and death in ways that other races of the universe find abhorrent and unnatural.”

            “What’s this ‘quintessence’ stuff, exactly?”

            “It is the natural raw energy and life force present in all living things,” Lotor answered. Lance’s eyebrows drew together.

            “So… quintessence is the Force and the Alteans are all Siths?” he asked, glancing at Captain Seitz. She gave him another curt nod.

            “That is much how I understood it, Mr. Sanchez.” She glanced at Lotor and then picked up the story again. “The Alteans also arrived at Kerberos, hoping to interfere. The Galrans fortunately managed to rescue Commander Holt and his son Matt. However, the pilot, Takashi Shirogane, was taken captive. Prince Lotor, why don’t you take it from there?”

            “Hold up,” Lance said, horror sitting in his stomach like a stone. “Shiro was _captured by a hostile alien race_ – and then you faked his death and both of the Holts’ by _blaming_ him for a crash that never even happened? Captain Seitz, what the f— How could the Garrison do something like that?” Captain Seitz looked at him icily.

            “It was necessary to preserve secrecy or risk people all over the Earth trying to get involved in an alien conflict they know nothing about. A pilot error was the most simple and believable explanation.”

            “You could have said the ship malfunctioned,” Lance said, glaring at her.

            “Not if we wanted any chance to send another mission to space within the next five years – and thus have any hope at all of continuing negotiations with the Galra, or bringing the Holts home.”

            “But not Shiro,” Lance said. There was a frenzied energy itching under his skin. Captain Seitz’s cold eyes should have been enough to dry his mouth for a week, but he felt a need to defend Shiro. It was an imperative coming from somewhere inside him. In a jolt of déjà vu, it reminded him of the surge of protectiveness he’d felt for Kent a few days ago. Two people thrown to the wolves by everyone they should have been able to trust with their lives.

            “Wait and hear the whole story,” Lotor said, his voice soothing. Lance turned his glare to the alien, suddenly a bit less afraid. Anger curled in his gut, burning everything else away. If he was still going to run, he’d like to give Lotor a good sock in the jaw first. “There are not many Alteans left. Most of them have been killed in the bloody wars they have waged. The Galra Empire first grew as an alliance of planets who sought to bring down the Alteans and stop them draining planets to harvest quintessence. However, despite their small numbers, they remain a massive threat, because they possess the most powerful weapon the universe has ever seen. It is called Voltron.” Lance felt something jolt down his spine at that word. For the briefest moment, he had vision, all indistinct and dissolving, as if he were seeing it underwater. He saw something massive, colored in red, green, blue, yellow, and black, with glowing eyes that pierced him to the core. It was gone so fast he wasn’t sure he hadn’t just imagined it. His eyes met Lotor’s and something flashed across them, as brief as the vision and probably just as imaginary. After all, there was no explanation for why Lotor should look triumphant.

            “Voltron is a massive robot, made of five combined robot lions,” he continued. Lance’s bewildered disbelief must have shown on his face. “Trust me when I say, it is far more frightening than it sounds. Nothing – no weapon of our own creation, no fleet of ships, no number of planets – can stand against the destruction that Voltron is capable of unleashing. However, Voltron requires five pilots, who must match the quintessence of each lion.”

            “I thought you said quintessence was only present in living things?”

            “The lions _are_ living things.”

            “They’re robots, but they’re alive?”

            “They are robots animated by infused quintessence,” Lotor explained, a hint of impatience in his voice. “They are very much alive, and they choose their pilots carefully. With so few Alteans left, it has become extremely difficult for them to replace pilots when they die. In fact, the last pilots were all killed a number of years ago, and the Alteans have not been able to replace them. The Galra Empire has been able to make some impressive headway against the Alteans in Voltron’s absence. Until, that is the Kerberos mission.

            “The witch-queen Allura and her royal advisor, Coran, kidnapped Takashi Shirogane – Shiro – and made an extraordinary discovery: humans have the correct sort of quintessence to pilot Voltron. Not every species can, you see.” One of Lotor’s ears flicked like a cat, drawing Lance’s eyes to it, fascinated despite himself. “A few Galra have the potential – but very few. Most of the other races that can do not exist anymore. The Alteans wiped them out to prevent any chance that another people could steal their weapon away from them. But now they are desperate. They made Shiro the pilot of the black lion.

            “Then, about five months ago, Shiro briefly escaped. He managed to steal a ship, and return to Earth, where he crashed—”

            “The meteor,” Lance said. As soon as the words left his mouth he knew, without a single doubt in his head, that it was true. “That was the meteor. The telescope man was right. It _was_ a crashing ship.” Lotor inclined his head in agreement.

            “Unfortunately, the Alteans followed him, and while retrieving him they took the opportunity to kidnap four more humans that matched the quintessence of various lions. You and your friends were three of them.” Lance just stared at Lotor. He’d half-guessed where this was heading, but hearing it said out loud just made it sound beyond absurd.

            “So I’ve been fighting an intergalactic space war for a bunch of evil Sith aliens,” he said.

            “Yes.”

            “I wouldn’t do that, though. And – and neither would Hunk or Pidge, and definitely not Shiro.” Lotor shrugged.

            “One of the Altean quintessence arts is mind control. The witch-queen happens to be particularly skilled in that area. Why do you think you cannot remember anything that happened in the past four months? You were brainwashed.” Lance was shaking his head almost involuntarily.

            “No, no, no, this is crazy. This is _crazy_. How would I have gotten away? I can’t possibly have gotten caught up in something like that and not remember _any_ of it.”

            “We’re not sure how you got away – we’re only happy that you have,” Captain Seitz said brusquely. “In fact, we’re hoping that you can help us.”

            “Voltron is not inherently evil,” Lotor said. “If we could manage to steal the blue lion – your lion – from the Alteans, you could pilot it for _us_. Even better, if we manage to break the witch-queen’s hold on all of your friends, we could have all of Voltron on our side.”

            “Who was the fifth pilot?” Lance asked, scrambling for something concrete and understandable, any question he could ask that would make the world turn right side up again.

            “Keith Kogane,” Captain Seitz answered, and the world spun like a tilt-a-whirl. Lance felt another hysterical laugh burst out.

            “You have to be fucking _joking_ ,” he gasped. He knew it was true, with the same certainty that he’d had about the meteor crashing. That dream had not been a dream. Captain Seitz’s eyes were cold again.

            “I assure you, I would not joke about any of this,” she said. Lance buried his head in his hands.

            “This is insane,” he moaned.

            “Insane it may be, Mr. Sanchez, but it is still happening. Prince Lotor and his entourage arrived shortly after the Alteans abducted you and your friends. He informed us that it was likely that the Alteans would be back, harvesting potential future pilots and draining the rest of the planet of its– quintessence.” She fumbled the word slightly, the only break Lance had yet seen in her composure. “With your escape, it is likely they will arrive at any moment. If you want the planet to survive, you will help us.” Lance’s fingers curled, digging against his temples. Lost memories pounded his skull, trying to escape. This whole situation was wrong, horribly wrong.

            Something warm and soft brushed against his hand, gently tugging it away from his head. Lance looked up to discover Lotor had somehow stood up and crossed over to him silently, and was crouching down beside him, one hand wrapped around Lance’s own. Lance yelped in fear, ripping his hand away from Lotor and springing out of the chair and away so fast he almost toppled over. Lotor stayed where he was, a look of sympathy on his face.

            “Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said softly. “I know this may seem overwhelming. But I am here – the Galra are here – to try and help. Earth does not need to face this danger alone.” Lance clutched the hand Lotor had grabbed to his chest, staring wide-eyed. Lotor stood back up, keeping his distance. “For whatever comfort it may offer, if you broke free of the witch-queen’s control, I have high hopes that your friends can do the same.” He glanced at Captain Seitz, who remained a stiff, impersonal presence. “It is a lot of responsibility, but you have an opportunity to save your friends, to protect your family, to rescue the entire planet. That is a gift.”

            Lance pressed his clutched hands closer to his chest, trying to steady his breathing. His instincts still screamed at the sight of Lotor, adrenaline spiking and pushing him to run, run, run. But however mad the story, the evidence was standing in front of him, purple and impossibly tall, with its head tilted slightly as if in curiosity. Aliens were real, and at least some of them were already on Earth.

            He couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t go home and look Cal in the face if in a week’s time he might be dead and Lance hadn’t tried to stop it. He couldn’t conscience the idea of tiny little Max being beamed up into some spaceship and wiped of thought and agency. No matter how much it felt like his heart was trying to claw its way out of his throat, he couldn’t walk out and leave Hunk and Pidge behind. Shiro, captive for almost a year and a half now, could not be doomed to oblivion, and Lance owed him whatever meager help he could possibly offer. Even Keith, as abrasive and infuriating as he was, deserved better than to live a warrior with no free will. So Lance asked the only question he could, swallowing past the tremor in his voice.

            “What do you need me to do?”

            “For the moment, nothing much,” Captain Seitz said, her voice neutral. “You will go home and you will keep all of this secret – from _everyone_ , including your family. You will set up regular appointments with Dr. Ito so that we may continue to talk. It would be best to cancel your appointments with your current therapist. Now that you know the truth about what happened, you would only be lying to her.”

            “I will be happy to continue to answer any questions you have about Voltron or the Galra,” Lotor said. The smile that didn’t touch his eyes was back. “I am also interested in getting to know you better, Lance. Before the wars began, there was a time when the pilots of Voltron were revered across the universe. I never thought I’d have the chance to meet one that wasn’t trying to kill me.” Lance didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nodded. After a moment of silence, Captain Seitz turned and opened the door.

            “I’ll walk you out,” she said. Lance turned to follow her. As the door swung shut behind him, he heard Lotor call after him.

            “I’ll see you soon. Lance.” The door closed before Lotor could see the shiver that ran down his spine.

            He and Captain Seitz trudged back up the hallway in mutual silence. She nodded to Dr. Ito as they reemerged into his office. He glanced up, smiling at Lance.

            “Same time on Thursday?” he asked. The part of his mind that had finally stopped screaming _RUN_ when he’d gotten away from Lotor screamed _TOO SOON_ , but he nodded anyway, his mouth dry. Captain Seitz continued to follow him, all the way back to the front door. She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder before he left.

            “One question, Mr. Sanchez,” she said. Lance turned back. “You mentioned ‘the telescope man’ a couple times in there – who exactly were you referring to?”

            “Oh,” Lance said, a feeling of relief spreading across his chest. “That. It was some conspiracy nut I ran into in Bluff Park. He recognized me from the news. He was babbling on about me getting abducted by aliens, had all these blurry photos of the meteor and everything.” He shrugged. “I mean, I guess he was right, but he didn’t actually _know_ anything. He’s just some guy with a tinfoil hat who got lucky.”

            “What was his name?” Captain Seitz asked. Lance frowned.

            “I have no idea. The guy was kind of freaking me out so I ran away as fast as possible.” Captain Seitz nodded.

            “Alright. Thank you for coming, Mr. Sanchez. I’ll see you on Thursday.”

            “Right,” Lance said.

            His first breath of fresh air felt like such a relief after the claustrophobic underground tunnel and conference room that Lance thought his knees might give out from under him. He stumbled his way almost in a daze to the bullet train, climbing aboard and sinking into a seat. A Garrison lieutenant working his tablet gave him a brief glance from across the aisle but otherwise ignored him. The train pulled out of the station, speeding across the desert. By the time Lance finally caught his breath, they were halfway back to town. He glanced up. The sun was still high and blazing. He had time. His brain was screaming so loud he could barely think. He needed to be somewhere quiet, far quieter than Cal’s apartment in the middle of the city.

            Kent’s shack was always as quiet as death.

 

*

 

            Louisa ran her thumb idly along the edge of her tablet, scanning the cafeteria. Lance should stick out like a sore thumb without his Garrison uniform on. An endless parade of cadets in white and orange rolled by, chattering with each other, moaning about homework and simulator drills. The officers and higher ranked members created a wall of gray on the opposite side of the room, many of them working through their lunch, fingers swiping across tablets and tapping on phones. Iverson was standing near the door, she saw, glaring at cadets as they came in. She felt a brief wave of trepidation that he might be waiting for Lance too – her little brother did not need Iverson shaking him down on his plans to return to the Garrison right now.

            Her fears were allayed when Iverson straightened up at the entrance of a young blonde captain that Louisa didn’t recognize. The woman paused, saying a few words to Iverson, and the two of them walked into the cafeteria together. Louisa sighed, sitting back in her chair and checking her watch in annoyance. She only had an hour-long lunch break. Surely Lance couldn’t _still_ be in his meeting with Dr. Ito. Had he run into another friend?

            She shot off a text, and then, impatient, called him. His phone went straight to voicemail.

            “Lance, you empty-headed schmuck, where are you? I’m going to be late for class if you don’t show up soon.” She stabbed the hang up button with her thumb, sighing. With a last glance around the cafeteria, she stood up and got in line for food, chewing her lip. “If I have to sneak off campus to go check on that kid…” she muttered to herself. “Cal better be keeping an eye on him.”

 

*

 

            Lance sank into the couch in Kent’s shack in relief. There was no sound here but the desert wind. His eyes raked across the piles of paper strewn about the room, more orderly than when Lance had gotten here but still helplessly haphazard. There was only so much organizing he could do.

            His gaze drifted to the map pinned to the conspiracy board, the thick Sharpie lines circling and pointing to the caves that Kent had found. Caves full of drawings of a blue lion. A blue lion, just like what Lance had supposedly piloted.

            The connection had sparked in his brain the moment Lotor had mentioned ‘robot lions’ – but he hadn’t said anything. He’d barely been able to speak from shock and fear anyway, except when he’d gotten angry about Shiro. There wasn’t much he could have said anyway, not without giving away the existence of the shack and his own many definitely unlawful visits to it. But if the lions belonged to a bloodthirsty race from among the stars, why were there drawings of it on Earth?

            REMEMBER THE GARRISON LIES.

            “Well, you were right about that, Kent,” Lance told the air. “You were sure as fuck right about that.” He breathed slowly – in through his nose, out through his mouth, counting to five each time. “The question is… how much are they lying?” In and out. “How much are they being tricked?” In and out. “How many different stories are there? How many people think they know the truth but have been fed a lie?” In and out, in and out, in and out.

            He pushed himself up from the couch and walked over to the map, running his fingers over the words ENERGY SOURCE. “I guess I knew I’d eventually have to go out there myself,” he mumbled. “I’ll try not to repeat your late night freezing cold desert adventure,” he added, a slight smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. He glanced at the window. “Not today,” he decided. “Tomorrow I’ve got to go to the police station, and find out what that detective wanted to talk to me about. I’ll go on Wednesday, when I’ve got the whole day free.”

            He retreated from the board, reaching into his pocket to turn his phone back on. It beeped with a slew of messages from Louisa. “ _Shit_ ,” he mumbled. “I totally forgot I was supposed to have lunch with her. I’ll make it up to her on Thursday. If that Lotor dude doesn’t scare me half to death again.” He looked up, staring around the shack. He hadn’t turned the light on, so it was illuminated only by the sun, beginning to sink toward the horizon. Streams of light filtered through sheets and dust, slowly fading the words off paper. “Have you ever been terrified without having the slightest idea why, Kent?” he asked. “Have you ever felt like you’re going to burst at the seams, and you can barely breathe, and your pounding heart is the only thing you can hear, but the worst part of it all is that you just have no idea why you’re so very, very scared?”

 

*

 

            Chuck sucked in the chilly night air, pulling the blanket close around his shoulders. Three days straight in front of a computer had done nothing but tell him that after breaking a teacher’s arm and getting expelled from the Garrison, Keith Kogane had, to all appearances, vanished into thin air. He had not returned to his foster family, he had not registered at any school that Chuck could find, and he had not done anything obvious like use his email. He didn’t even _have_ any social media that Chuck could find. Even if he did, Chuck was willing to bet it would be completely blank after his expulsion anyway.

            That left the more intense and difficult hacking as his only recourse. Getting into security cameras, trying to track him down with facial recognition and the like – all of that was well beyond him. So he’d gone into one of his forums and DM’ed one of the newer members, one of the slew that had joined after the Kerberos mission. Their username was just ‘pigeon.’ They didn’t post much – and seemed to be disdainful of a number of the threads on the forum, calling the commenters “delusional” on more than one occasion – but what they did post, they’d hacked straight off an actual Garrison computer. They rapidly got a reputation in the forum. pigeon was one of those people that was almost frighteningly good with computers. The joke was that if you asked pigeon to hack the Pentagon, their only comment would be “give me half an hour.”

> Hey pigeon— I need a favor, if you’re willing to help me out. I’m trying to track down a former Garrison student, Keith Kogane. He got expelled not long after the Kerberos mission and seems to have vanished. Think you could find him for me? We can negotiate a price.

            There hadn’t been a single peep from pigeon in response, though. They hadn’t even seen the message. Frustrated, he scrolled back to try and find pigeon’s most recent activity, and it seemed they hadn’t posted anything in almost half a year. Their last message had only been one sentence:

> Does the word ‘Voltron’ mean anything to anyone?

             There were no replies.

            Out of options, Chuck had come out to Bluff Park to try and clear his head. He gazed up at the stars, tracing the constellations. It took someone truly absurd, he thought, to believe they were alone in the universe. He could respect people who thought that they just hadn’t made contact with any aliens yet – but even that made little sense to him. In the vast and infinite universe, shouldn’t there be at least one species that had evolved far enough to figure out wormholes and pocket dimensions and how to jump through space? Shouldn’t that species have sent out its ships across the universe, exploring far and wide, seeking all other signs of life? He had believed this, wholeheartedly, from the time he was a child. He’d grown up watching alien movies and had accepted as fact that humans had run into aliens over the course of history. It had sent him reeling to discover that most people in the world didn’t share his assumptions.

            “Excuse me.” Chuck turned with a sigh, the blanket twisting with him. He’d long since learned to recognize the false politeness of a police officer about to kick him out of the park.

            “I’m just stargazing,” he said, talking before he’d even laid eyes on the man. “I have the blanket because I’m cold, not because I’m trying to sleep here. I’m not homeless.” He finally got himself turned to face the cop. It wasn’t one of the ones he recognized. The man had dark hair and shockingly white teeth. He was smiling.

            “Are you Charles Kennet?” he asked. Chuck frowned.

            “I am,” he said cautiously.

            “You’re the administrator of those discussion boards about the Garrison – all the ones about how they’re hiding aliens from us and the Kerberos mission was a cover-up, right?”

            “Officer, am I in trouble?” Chuck asked. He loosened the blanket, shifting his legs to make sure they weren’t asleep.

            “Did you meet Lance Sanchez the other day?” the man asked, advancing closer. Chuck jumped to his feet.

            “Sir, who are you?” he demanded. The man paused. He had not stopped smiling.

            “Don’t worry about a thing,” he said. His tone was soothing, as if he were speaking to a spooked animal. “This might pinch a bit.”

            Something sharp pricked Chuck’s neck, and then all he knew was blackness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are lies within lies within lies. You should never believe more than half of what Lotor or anyone at the Garrison says.
> 
> I hope that wasn't too exposition heavy - we should get Lance going out to the caves and stuff next chapter, so there should be a bit more action there.
> 
> Also I realize that with Chuck referring to "pigeon" as "they" I'm actually using three different sets of pronouns for Pidge in this fic lol


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 9.2k words haaaaaaa
> 
> For Lance's birthday I wrote a little prequel to this fic! It's called ["Seventeen and Counting."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11641188) It will have no major impact on the main storyline so you can totally skip it, although it does contextualize one specific moment in this chapter.
> 
> There is a brief reference to a character having depression in this chapter. Please read carefully.

            Lance dreamed nothing coherent, only shards of purple light and the distant sound of someone shouting his name. He awoke with heavy eyelids and limbs, his head complaining of a lack of rest. Groaning behind his teeth, he buried his face into the pillow. He reached up one hand to pull the silent headphones away from his ears, tossing them blindly onto the sofa.

            “Thanks,” Cal’s voice said.

            “Mmf,” Lance groaned. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

            “My professor’s wife went into labor last night, so class is cancelled.” Lance lifted his head and looked groggily over at Cal. He’d set Lance’s headphones down on the table and was leaning back on the couch, a textbook dropped open on his lap. A pencil spun slowly through his fingers. His hair was damp from a shower. He glanced over at Lance. “What are you up to today?” Lance dropped his head back to the pillow.

            “Gotta go to the police station,” he said, his voice muffled. “They want to talk to me about Pidge for some reason.”

            “Want me to come with you?” Cal asked. “It can’t be more boring than my problem sets.” Lance shrugged, his shoulders bunching up the sheets.

            “If you want, sure.”

            “How was lunch with Louisa yesterday?” Lance groaned, wrapping his arms around his head.

            “I forgot,” he mumbled. “I had a really long conversation with– Dr. Ito, and then I was exhausted and just got on the train without thinking.” Cal grunted.

            “Dr. Ito was helpful, though?” he asked. His face hidden in the pillow, Lance gnawed on his lip.

            “He was… different, for sure,” he said. His mouth was sticky and dry. A night of disturbed sleep and early morning hunger and nausea set his head and stomach rocking like a sea-sick boat. The taste of a lie to his brother crested the wave, sitting unpalatable in his mouth. If he gave it voice, it would make him ill. “He… I learnt more at the Garrison than I have been with my therapist here,” he said, turning his head to free his face and speak clearly. Cal looked sideways at him. Their eyes held for a moment before Lance rolled away, pushing himself up to sitting. “I need a shower,” he said.

            The cracked linoleum of Cal’s bathroom was comfortingly clean and cool under his bare feet. He stood still under the showerhead for a long few minutes, the heat sinking relaxation into his muscles. His neck was bent, the stream of water breaking against the back of his head, soaking his hair, running down his back and cheeks, dripping down to his nose. Slowly, his mind cleared and the churning of his stomach quieted to complaining mutters of hunger. He rubbed the soap bar across his body, the habitual movement soothing. Its blank scent sank into his skin, chasing away the stink of the underground hallway.

            The room was damp with steam when he stepped out, the mirror fogged over. He tucked a towel around his waist, water still running down his chest and dripping off his hair. He grabbed his toothbrush and scrubbed his teeth, washing out the dry stickiness. He left the bathroom feeling significantly lighter and calmer, the ends of his hair sticking damply to the back of his neck. He opened the door to the smell of eggs cooking. Cal glanced over his shoulder from the stove and Lance gave him a slight smile.

            “You looked like you might need something more than just toast to get you going,” Cal said. Lance’s smile grew to a grin.

            “Cal, have I told you that you’re the best brother ever?”

            “Don’t get used to it,” Cal scowled.

            “I won’t,” he reassured him, still grinning, sliding into a seat at the table. “I know you usually burn everything.” Cal sent him a glare that Lance returned mockingly.

            The eggs were slightly over-salted, but he compensated by shoveling them onto buttery toast. Cal opened up a news stream on his computer while they ate. Lance pricked up his ears with interest.

            “I’ve been so caught up in my own memories – or, you know, lack thereof – I haven’t looked at the news at all,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of egg. “What happened while I was gone? Nothing apocalyptic, I hope? Anything blow up?”

            “Only Sony’s attempt at a horror franchise,” Cal said. Scenes from an earthquake in Japan scrolled across the screen. His eyes flicked over to Lance. “Nothing exceptional,” he shrugged. “A senator in Ohio got caught up in a sex scandal. Germany had an election. A Malaysian scientist discovered some new underwater plant that might help treat MS. There was a ceasefire negotiated in Sudan – or wait, did that happen before you left?” Lance creased his forehead and shrugged. “To be honest I wasn’t paying too much attention to the news myself.” Lance paused, fork still in his mouth.

            “You?” he asked. “You used to practice English by reading the New York Times out loud every morning while Louisa and I were still on _Green Eggs and Ham_.” Cal ran a finger down the edge of his keyboard, his gaze following it closely.

            “When someone you care about is in trouble, the world gets awfully small,” he said finally. Abruptly, he stood, holding out a hand for Lance’s plate. “I’ll take that if you’re finished,” he said. Lance, still chewing his last bite of toast, slid the plate over to him silently. Cal wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. “Shall we get going?” he asked.

            “Yeah,” Lance said, swallowing his discomfort. “Let’s.”

* 

            The sight of Calixto Sanchez sitting cross-legged and scowling in the station lobby sent a jolt of déjà vu through Hopkins. Both Lance and Hunk’s parents had arrived within twenty-four hours after their disappearance, heedless of the cost of last minute airline tickets, but Calixto, much closer, had gotten there first. With the Garrison still on lockdown when they called to report their three missing students, not even Louisa or any Garrison personnel had been able to come to the station until late the next morning. During that first midnight scramble, Calixto had been alone, standing in the station wide-eyed and pale and lost. He’d called Lance, over and over and over, the battery on his phone running down until it died. He’d thrown it to the ground, collapsing into a chair and burying his face into his hands, shivering with unshed tears.

            Lance, his long limbs folded into the chair next to his brother, dispelled the image. He was picking his fingernails, having an on-and-off conversation with Calixto. Spotting Hopkins, he shot up straight.

            “Hi, detective,” he said.

            “Hello, Lance,” Hopkins said. ‘How are you doing?” Lanced pursed his lips, shrugging.

            “Okay, I guess,” he said. “You said you wanted to talk about Pidge?” His voice was inquisitiveness edged with hesitancy.

            “Let’s go somewhere quieter,” Hopkins said. Lance got to his feet, glancing quickly at Calixto.

            “I’ll be out here,” he waved him off. “Unless you want me to come in with you?”

            “No, no, I’ll be fine,” Lance said. “See you in a few.”

            Hopkins took him back to the same room as last time, watching Lance out of the corner of his eye. He seemed healthier and more animated than when Hopkins had last seen him, although there was a sting of nervousness in the way his fingers fluttered along the hem of his shirt and in the quick smile he gave as they sat down. Hopkins opened a folder and slid a photo across to him without comment. Lance glanced at it and then tilted his head. Confusion danced in his eyes.

            “Yeah, that sure is Pidge,” he said. “…Why?”

            “Can you identify the people in these photos for me?” Hopkins asked. He laid out three more photos. One of them was a cadet profile picture practically indistinguishable from the first one he’d brought out. The next was a newspaper clipping of the Kerberos mission crew. The last was a photo of a girl in a short green dress, grinning broadly at the camera. Lance frowned, leaning over them. He pressed two fingers to the two cadet photos. “Both of these are Pidge, or at least I think they are,” he said. He pointed at the girl. ‘I’ve never met her, but she looks like the girl in a photo that Pidge had. Hunk was pretty sure she was his girlfriend – but looking at it a bit closer, they actually look pretty similar, so… Maybe she’s his sister?” Lance shrugged. “Pidge never actually told us anything about her.” He picked up the newspaper clipping. “And that’s the… That’s the Kerberos mission. Takashi Shirogane, Commander Samuel Holt, and…” He trailed off, squinting at the photo. “Why is Matt Holt Pidge’s twin brother?” he asked. Hopkins sighed, taking the photo back.

            “Pidge is no one’s brother,” he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Everything he and Cho learned about the case seemed like a completely new thread of questioning, taking them down a completely different track than the last. There were no answers, only ever stranger questions. He held up the second cadet photo. “This is Matt Holt from his first year at the Garrison,” he said. He pointed to the girl. “That’s Katie Holt, Matt’s little sister.” He picked up the first cadet photo. “This,” he gestured, “this is Pidge Gunderson’s Garrison directory photo. Except, Pidge Gunderson isn’t a real person. Pidge Gunderson is really Katie Holt.” Lance’s jaw hit the floor.

            “Pidge is WHAT?” he yelped. His entire body had shifted forward on the seat, a breath away from launching to his feet. Hopkins sat back. The reaction was genuine, or he should hand over his badge. He had had no idea. Lance gripped the edge of the sofa. “Wait… Pidge was a _girl_ the entire time? But he…” Lance was spluttering. “How? The Garrison runs background checks. How did Pidge—?”

            “She constructed an exceptionally detailed false identity,” Hopkins said. He and Cho still couldn’t fathom where a fifteen-year-old had found someone to fabricate documents that fooled the Garrison admissions. They refused to believe she could have done it herself. True, her mother had insisted Katie was a genius with computers – “I don’t mean she knows how to use Photoshop. I mean she was proficient in five different coding languages by the time she was six years old” – but parents were prone to exaggeration. “However,” Hopkins continued, “when we started investigating Gunderson’s parents, the discrepancies started turning up. It wasn’t hard to prove they never existed. Mrs. Holt identified Gunderson’s photo as Katie. The timelines of their disappearances match up. It’s definitely her.” He ran a hand across his face. Lance had picked up Katie’s photo and was staring at it, his eyes fixed on her face with disbelieving intensity.

            “Why did he – she – disguise herself?” Lance asked.

            “We don’t know for sure,” Hopkins said. Mrs. Holt had told them, her face cold and still, that she would never have let Katie anywhere near the Garrison after losing Sam and Matt. It still didn’t explain why Katie wanted to go to the Garrison in the first place, or why she’d gone to such extraordinary lengths to do so.

            After they’d talked to Mrs. Holt, Hopkins and Cho had called the Garrison. That Captain Seitz woman had turned up again. Telling her that Pidge Gunderson was really Katie Holt had finally cracked her stony calmness. She’d practically run from the police station as soon as Cho had run out of questions. Neither he nor Cho could fathom what that was about, except perhaps concern for the security of the Garrison background check if a fifteen-year-old kid had gotten past it. Still, evidently the Garrison was just as surprised as everyone else. Whether this had anything at all to do with her disappearance, it was impossible to tell.

            “Um…” Lance said. Hopkins looked at him sharply. He was shifting, his eyes flicking across the photos, lingering on the picture of Kerberos crew. He clearly wanted to say something, teeth pressing into his bottom lip.

            “What?”

            “Nothing,” he answered, stilling himself with evident effort. “It’s nothing.”

            “Lance, if you know something—”

            “I don’t know _anything_ ,” Lance spat. The venom in his voice took Hopkins aback. Before he could recover, Lance had stood up. “Did you just want to find out if I knew about Pidge? Or, I guess I mean, Katie?”

            “And if you have any idea about why she would have—”

            “I don’t know,” Lance said shortly. “No. I have no idea.” Hopkins felt his shoulders droop.

            “Alright, well, if you think of anything—”

            “I have your number.” Hopkins nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose again.

            “I’ll walk you out, then,” he sighed. Lance didn’t look at him, just kept pace as they returned to the lobby. On the threshold, he paused, turning back.

            “You didn’t… find Keith, did you?” he asked. There was a terrifying hint of desperation in his voice. Their eyes met, and an icy spike of adrenaline ran through Hopkins’s spine, making him feel more awake than he had in days. There was fear welling in those deep blue eyes, dangerously close to overflowing. Hopkins almost grabbed his shoulder, marched him back into the room, and forced him to sit down until he talked. But Lance looked like a spooked animal, the terror in his eyes raw and helpless in a way that made Hopkins realize afresh how much Lance was just a kid, just a very scared and lost kid. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Lance how long gone Keith seemed to be.

            “We’ve had some trouble getting in touch with him,” he said, trying to sound soothing, as if there was nothing wrong. “I’ll let you know when we do, alright?”

            Those blue eyes darkened, but before he could reply, Calixto said from behind him, “Who’s Keith?”

            Lance yelped, jumping and spinning in a circle to see his brother had stood up and walked over to meet them. Hopkins was left with nothing but his back while Lance stuttered an answer.

            “It’s— He’s— He was in my class at the Garrison, he’s the one who got kicked out,” he squeaked. “I didn’t— I didn’t hear you come up,” he said.

            “Why are you asking the police about him?” Calixto asked, frowning at Hopkins. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, unsure whether he should leave yet or not.

            “I… I may have sort of… I think I remembered seeing him,” Lance muttered, looking at his shoes. Calixto’s eyes went wide.

            “Lance, you _remembered_ something?” he said. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

            “I did! To the police. And to Louisa, eventually.” Lance still wasn’t looking, but Hopkins saw the briefest expression of hurt flick across Calixto’s face.

            “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

            “Because I wasn’t even certain it was real!” Lance shouted. His hands balled into fists at his sides. “Everything I bring up, you want to analyze and talk to me about endlessly, but I don’t have any answers, okay? I don’t know what happened to me.” His nails pressed so hard into his palms Hopkins was a little surprised they didn’t break the skin. “I don’t know what happened! So I had this one little half memory – barely more than a dream – and I just, I couldn’t deal with you trying to work out what it meant to me, okay?” Calixto was frowning.

            “Wait— Keith— Wasn’t he the one that Beatriz was teasing you about—?”

            “SHUT UP!” Lance said. Under his brown skin, he had flushed red to his ears. “Why are you even bringing that up? That’s not the—” He glanced back and saw Hopkins and fury spasmed across his face. “I’ll call you if I know anything,” he said. “But I don’t, I don’t know anything about where my friends are – or apparently even who my friends are – so can you leave me alone now?”

            “Thank you for your time, Lance,” Hopkins heard himself say, unable to grasp a more delicate way to exit the situation. As he turned to go back inside, he heard Lance turn back to Calixto and speak in a blast of sharp-edged Spanish. When he glanced through the window a minute later, after returning to his desk, he saw Lance storming out on his own.

* 

            The hot air of the desert whipping across his face finally brought the tears spilling out of his eyes. By the time he got to Kent’s hut, he stumbled inside with tear tracks streaking down the dust on his face and collapsed to sitting on the floor in front of the sofa, drawing his knees up to his chest and burying his face on them, rocking slightly, trying to alleviate the roiling feeling in his stomach. He shouldn’t have stormed out on Cal like that, or on Detective Hopkins for that matter, but he couldn’t look them in the eye with Lotor sitting smiling in his brain. He couldn’t quietly sit in Cal’s apartment eating eggs like nothing was wrong. He couldn’t talk to the police and act like he knew nothing – even if, in some ways, it was true that he felt like he knew less than ever.

            Pidge was a girl. The revelation had dropped from nowhere and Lance, already tense, had almost fallen from his chair in shock. However, the second he caught his breath, that knowledge had slotted into place like a puzzle piece. Just as he had known, with a certainty he couldn’t explain, that Lotor and Captain Seitz were telling the truth about the crashing meteor being a ship, or Keith Kogane being with him… wherever he had gone, the fact that Pidge was a girl felt undeniably and disconcertingly true. His fingers pressed against his knees, fidgety and tense, as half-remembered moments and conversations flitted across his brain. He’d wanted to tell Detective Hopkins that Pidge had been reclusive and too smart for his – or rather, her – own good. He’d remembered that she turned into a spitfire at the merest mention of the Kerberos mission. He’d remembered that she would linger at the doorways into teachers’ offices and that sometimes she would vanish behind them and catch up later, panting, with no explanation for where she had gone. He’d wanted to say that everyone at the Garrison gave each other sideways looks when the Kerberos mission came up, but that Pidge more than anyone seemed to actively disbelieve the Garrison when they talked about what happened.

            “Do you think she _knew_ , Kent?” Lance asked the empty shack. “I mean, if the Kerberos mission was really, uh, xeno-diplomacy, then the rest of the Holt family has to have known, right? The Garrison would have told them. But then, shouldn’t she have known her father and brother were really safe? Or maybe…” He ran a finger along the side of the table, dragging a line through the dust. “Maybe she didn’t believe they were safe, or, or, maybe she was mad about Shiro? Maybe she was trying to expose the Garrison? Like… she was looking for evidence? God, I just don’t… I can’t deal with this by myself, Kent. I’m not like you. I can’t come live out in a desert by myself and be okay. Well, as okay as you are, Mr. I-don’t-understand-what-vegetables-are. I need to talk to people, to bounce ideas around. I need someone to reassure me that I’m not going crazy.” He rubbed his temples. “I wish I could just tell Cal and Louisa everything, but what if they don’t believe me? And I mean… I’ve definitely broken more than one law just being in this shack. I don’t want them to… to…” He dropped his head back to his knees, tears pricking at his eyes again. “I’m scared, Kent,” he whispered. “I’m scared.”

            He stayed there for a long moment before shaking it off with a shudder and lifting his head. His eyes landed on the conspiracy board. The circled “ENERGY SOURCE” on the map beckoned him, pulled at him insistently. Almost without noticing his body moving, he got up and crossed the room. He glanced back at the window. It wasn’t even noon yet. He had hours and hours, and he couldn’t go back and face Cal until he’d at least tried to sort some of this out.

            He’d brought some snacks out to the shack to sustain him during his hours of sorting through Kent’s notes. Putting food in Kent’s cupboards had felt like another level of intrusion into his house, but Lance was quickly getting over any concern about that. Moving almost dreamlike through the house, he gathered a bag of some snacks, two big water bottles, and took the map off of the conspiracy board. He switched his phone off, ignoring a missed call from Cal. He paused by the hoverbike, worrying his lip for a moment, before throwing caution to the winds and climbing on.

            He had to look at the map to get pointed in the right direction at first. However, once he started going, he just moved without thinking about it, working on instinct just as he had to find Kent’s hut. There was a strange faint pull that seemed to brush at the very core of his being, leading him forwards. It was barely noticeable – if this was the extent of the strange energy that Kent had talked about pulling him to this place, he must really not have much to do with his time. Lance was pretty sure he’d felt the same amount of involuntary pull to the prospect of 1AM chocolate chip pancakes at a 24-hour IHOP. Still, there was something unsettling about the sensation that made his hands clench around the grip of the hoverbike. It was just slightly too intense to be his imagination.

            There were countless caves marked out on the various maps in Kent’s hut. Lance didn’t know how he chose the one that he did. He only knew, in a way he didn’t want to think about, that it was the right one. Something ached inside his chest as he dismounted, leaving the hoverbike parked outside. The pull that had led him here seemed to cut loose and leave him floating and empty, searching for the other end of a connection that simply wasn’t there. Gritting his teeth against the strange and inexplicable hollowness, he walked slowly into the dim and blessedly cool cave. The rock was sandblasted and worn down, but even in the dim light the carvings stood out clearly. He ran a hand hesitantly over one of them, a strange symbol that he half-recognized from Kent’s notes. As his fingers brushed the carving, it glowed an almost imperceptible blue. Then Lance’s head split apart with pain.

            A thousand fingernails screeched down a thousand chalk boards. A hundred bows raked across four hundred violin strings. There was a thin scream somewhere in the distance that Lance only realized was his own when he ran out of breath. Blue and black stars burst behind his eyes as he went to his knees, gravel and sand digging into his shins, his hands clutching his head. He couldn’t stop screaming, the sound pale and weak. He bent double over his thighs, elbows and forehead digging into the ground. His fingers curled in his hair as he trembled uncontrollably. He couldn’t stand, couldn’t move, could barely breathe around the screams tearing apart his body. His head seared and broke and split, demanding every ounce of attention. The only thing he knew was that he wanted it to stop, he needed it to stop. Then suddenly, there were arms, hot and strong, lifting Lance as if he weighed no more than a doll. He had no time to be afraid before his eyes rolled back in his head and he lost consciousness.

*

            He came to stretched out on some kind of cot, his mouth dry and dusty. His eyelids stuck together. The echoes of the sharp, splitting pain still rung in his head. As he laboriously pulled his eyes halfway open, wary of the rush of sunlight, he noticed a heavy weight on his chest. Then a bone-chillingly familiar voice hissed, “Kova! Bad kitty! Get off of him!”

            Lance bolted upright, dislodging a cat with dark blue fur. It leapt to the floor, hissing at him, and trotted across the room to jump onto the shoulder of an armored and hooded figure standing in the corner. Lance recoiled as he got a glimpse under the hood: the figure’s skin was blue and it had no eyes. Lotor, who had shooed the cat away, was standing at the foot of the cot, no less unsettling for being familiar. His eyes were fixed on Lance, who curled his legs under him, not sure whether he was about to bolt or throw a punch or both.

            “Are you alright?” Lotor asked, his voice surprisingly gentle. Lance choked on a response. “Narti!” he said, turning to the eyeless figure. “Get a glass of water will you?” The figure turned and left through a door. Lotor turned back to Lance, a slight smile on his face, and for the first time, there seemed to be some warmth in his eyes as well. Lance, feeling his heart thudding in his chest at maintaining eye contact with Lotor, glanced quickly around the room.

            For one heart-stopping moment he thought he was somehow in Kent’s shack, but it was only the similarity of a somewhat rustic wooden shack and the hot smell of the desert that triggered the association. This place appeared to be some kind of guard outpost, with a couple army-style cots against one wall, a sleek modern desk with a bank of computers and monitoring cameras opposite. Narti reappeared in the doorway, the cat rubbing along her legs, holding a glass of water.

            “Here,” Lotor said, gesturing her forward. She held the glass out to Lance, who reached up and wrapped his fingers around it slowly, still undecided whether or not he ought to just flee.

            “Thank… you,” he managed. He paused with the glass at his lips, wondering if he ought not to drink, but then again, if they’d wanted to hurt him, they could have just done it while he was unconscious. The dryness of his mouth decided for him. He took a swallow of water. It tasted normal. He glanced between Lotor and Narti. “Um… what happened?”

            Narti gave a brief glance at Lotor and then slid out of the room. Lance started at the sight of spotted blue tail sweeping behind her before dragging his eyes back to Lotor, who had pulled the desk chair up beside the bed and was sitting in it. “We saw you,” Lotor said, gesturing at the computer monitors. “You collapsed, so we came to help.” Lance took another swallow of water. He looked at Lotor for a long beat, and Lotor returned his gaze. Lance felt a shudder travel up his body, but grit his teeth. _Might as well do it now_ , he thought.

            “What is this place?” he asked. Lotor pressed his fingers together in a steeple.

            “Lance, I need to admit, yesterday, at the Garrison, I may not have been… _entirely_ honest,” he said. Despite his heart feeling like it might break his ribs, Lance held his gaze.

            “Okay,” he said.

            “You see, the Garrison is quite… reticent. They’re very nervous about public perception and what kind of information gets out. Once I heard about you, I managed to convince them that you needed to be told of the basics, at least, but they were still reluctant to tell you much of anything.” He sighed. “What I didn’t explain yesterday is the sheer scale of the Altean war in time. When I said that the Alteans had not been able to pilot Voltron since the deaths of the last Paladins, what I failed to mention was that most of those deaths occurred around 10,000 years ago.” Lance’s fingers tightened against the glass. The number _10,000_ echoed in his head with a ring of truth. “When they realized that they were losing their greatest weapon, they hid the various lions on primitive planets to stop any other race from getting their hands on one. We had, in fact, believed the Alteans to be all but beaten for good. The return of Voltron and the witch-queen has been… traumatic.” Lotor sighed deeply, leaning forward over his knees. “When Shiro returned to Earth, it seems that he somehow tracked down the Blue Lion, which had been hidden here by the Alteans after the death of its last Paladin. No doubt he recognized the feel of its quintessence. You and your friends evidently went with him. But then Allura arrived to recapture Shiro, and, well, you know how that part of the story goes.” Lance felt something warm brush against his elbow and flinched, glancing down to find Kova curled up on the edge of the bed and watching him with bright yellow eyes. He hesitantly extended a hand, and she nudged at it with her nose. He scratched carefully between her ears. “The Garrison had long suspected the carvings here to be alien in origin, but the Blue Lion shielded itself from any instruments they might have been able to use to detect it, until you, its new Paladin, arrived to unlock it. They are not… eager, for this particular oversight on their part to become public knowledge.”

            “Why is there a guard post out here, if they didn’t know about the lion?” Lance asked, withdrawing his hand. Kova stalked down the bed. Lotor shrugged.

            “It’s less of a guard post and more of a… study outpost. The cameras were only installed after you disappeared. No one was particularly expecting anyone to come back, but it wouldn’t pay to be surprised again.”

            “What are _you_ doing out here, then?” Lance asked. He realized the glass he was clutching was empty and lowered it.

            “I was hoping studying the carvings myself might yield some information about the Alteans or the lions that could help us combat Voltron,” Lotor shrugged. “So far, I have sadly been unsuccessful, but it remains a pleasant change from the underground bunker in the Garrison, and is isolated enough that I don’t have to worry about running into humans – at least, not normal humans.” He smiled again, though his eyes remained cold. “You must have been drawn back here by the residual pull of your lion.” Lance looked down, fidgeting with the now empty glass.

            “Do they normally, uh, do the carvings normally make people collapse with the worst migraine they’ve ever had?” he asked. Lotor shook his head.

            “No. I believe that was a residual effect of the witch-queen’s mind control. As is, I believe, your fear of me.” Lance looked up sharply and now Lotor’s eyes _did_ look amused. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not offended. I’m sure she sunk some deep conditioning into you to fear my race.”

            “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

            The instant the words were out of his mouth, Lance regretted them. He and Lotor both froze, staring at one another, Lance’s mouth still open around his last word. There was a flash of anger across Lotor’s face. Lance recoiled, hunching his shoulders, wondering how effectively he could use an empty water glass as a weapon. Kova, sitting on the end of the bed, swished her tail. Lotor schooled his features into stillness.

            “I suppose I can’t prove it to you, not without taking you to space and showing you the destruction that the Alteans have wrought,” he said, an undercurrent of strain and anger stretching his voice. “Is it not enough that you have lost your memory, that you found this place and collapsed in pain? Is it not enough that your friends are missing, torn from their families without explanation? Would a benevolent force do that?” He shook his head, a strand of white hair falling of his eye. “They _destroyed_ the Galra homeworld, Lance. An entire planet, simply gone, because they were afraid it was amassing too much powerful quintessence. Ten thousand years and the universe is still recovering from that. Have you seen the problems that refugees from wars in single countries cause across your Earth? Imagine that, multiplied to an entire planet. The Galra have been scattered, left homeless. We wander through the universe without roots, with nowhere to return to if we are scorned, and destined to never be anything but guests on another species’ world. I never got to see the planet that should have been my home. It was space dust centuries before my birth.”

            “I’m… sorry,” Lance said. Lotor took a deep breath.

            “No, I’m sorry, Lance. I shouldn’t have snapped like that. Of course you would be a bit… distrusting, with everything you’ve been through.” He pulled the chair slightly closer, sending Kova jumping off the bed and stalking around behind him. “I know I scare you, and that you’re trying to… come to terms with all of this. It can’t be easy. Still, I’m hoping that you will adjust to me, given time. I would like us to be friends, if that could ever be possible.” Lance bit the inside of his cheek, willing his heart to slow its frantic pounding.

            “I’m pretty sure you did just save my life,” he said, giving Lotor a wry grin. “So I guess that means I owe you one.” Lotor flashed a real smile. Lance relaxed slightly against the wall behind him, swinging his legs out in front of him so he was sitting across the bed. “So… I should probably go, now, I guess?”

            “If you want to,” Lotor said, standing up. “Although I’d be more than happy to talk without Captain Seitz peering icily over our shoulders.” A chuckle burst out of Lance before he could stop himself, and he jumped, stifling the sound. He stared at Lotor and nodded.

            “Yeah, okay. I mean, are there more secrets the Garrison is keeping, or…?” Lotor waved a hand dismissively.

            “The Garrison is keeping a plethora of secrets, most of which are ultimately inconsequential and certainly have nothing to do with either of us. I just meant— Well, I told you. I’d like to get to know you, Lance. I can’t help but be curious. Frankly, I’m enjoying the opportunity just to talk to any human other than some of the Garrison officers. You seem remarkably more… relaxed.”

            “Yeah, well, military officers in general have sticks up their asses, I guess,” Lance said, grinning slightly. His eyes went wide and he waved a hand at the look of bemused distress on Lotor’s face. “That’s an expression! Sorry! It’s just a— it means that they’re over committed to rules and discipline.” Kova meowed from the corner and Lotor shot her a withering look. She stuck her tail in the air and stalked out of the room.

            “Some factions of the Galra Empire are like that as well,” Lotor admitted, turning back to Lance. “My father’s high command is… Well, we’ve had our disagreements.” He gave Lance another smile, this one careless, sharp teeth gleaming.

            “So your father is the Emperor?” Lance asked. A grimace flashed across Lotor’s face. He stood up and crossed to a bag sitting on the floor next to the desk.

            “He is. Our relationship is… complicated. You asked me if I was set to inherit the Empire by right of birth, and, well.” He gave a short, sharp laugh. “Certainly not at the moment, no.” He reached into the bag and pulled out some kind of packet, which he tore open, and popped something that looked like a seed into his mouth. “Want one?” he offered, holding the packet out to Lance. Lance leaned back, eyeing it suspiciously.

            “Uh… do you know for a fact that it’s not going to kill me? Or, like, turn me purple or anything?” Lotor laughed and shook his head, pulling back the packet.

            “Fair point,” he said. “I don’t imagine _corrufia_ seeds would do much to you, but I haven’t tested them, so perhaps better safe than sorry.” He considered Lance a moment, chewing on another seed. “What do humans like for snacks?” he asked. “I don’t generally join the Garrison officers for meals.” Lance shrugged.

            “Human food is pretty diverse, man, you’d have to ask me to get a little more specific,” he said. Suddenly Lotor was closer than Lance had thought he was, looming over him a moment before dropping back into his chair.

            “Well, what do _you_ like?” he asked. Lance swallowed, fear sitting tight and jittery in his chest.

            “Uh… I’m a fan of the sweet and salty, I guess, when it comes to snacking. Chocolate-covered almonds, stuff like that.” He realized he’d drawn his legs back up towards him and forced them to relax. Lotor watched him silently, tossing back another handful of seeds.

            “The Garrison officers tell me that humans have no telepathic forms of communication. Is that true?” he asked suddenly. Lance blinked in surprise.

            “Um… yeah. I mean, no, we don’t… telepathy is not a real thing. Not for humans, anyway,” he added hastily. Lotor finished the packet of seeds and crumpled it in his hand.

            “Fascinating,” he murmured.

            “Is that something common for aliens?” Lance asked. He was still holding his water glass from earlier, running his fingers absentmindedly around the rim.

            “Oh no, not at all,” Lotor said, tossing the packet into a trash can. “Some species have it, but it is rare. But, if you managed to break the witch-queen’s mind control, I thought perhaps your species had some experience with mind-to-mind contact. It is truly impressive you managed to escape her thrall. You even hold your conditioned fear to my appearance in check. I was prepared for you to try and kill me on sight yesterday. You must be an extraordinary example of a human, Lance.” Lance shifted uncomfortably.

            “I… I’m not… I’m nothing special,” he shrugged. “I mean, yeah, okay, I’d like to think I’m a decent pilot, and not just anyone can get into the Garrison, but still, Hunk and Pidge are both way smarter than I am, and so are Cal and Louisa.” Lotor tsked, distracting Lance for a moment wondering what sort of translation device Lotor was using and whether that sound meant the same thing to Galra.

            “Don’t sell yourself short, Lance,” Lotor said. “I’m sure you were one of the best pilots in the whole Garrison.”

            “I wasn’t,” Lance muttered, his eyes dropping as the vision of Keith danced in front of them.

            “Would you like to let me judge for myself?” Lotor asked. Lance’s head jerked up.

            “What?” he asked.

            “Your piloting capabilities. Would you like to let me judge for myself? I mean, I heard tales of the expertise of the new Blue Paladin, but I have yet to confront the lions myself. I have a little ship outside from the Garrison that I used to fly down here. I would love the chance to see a Paladin of Voltron fly.”

            “I…” Lance looked down at his hands, clenched tight around the glass. He should say no, he should say it was getting late and just leave, but… flying. He’d been missing flying ever since he woke up in that hospital bed. It haunted his dreams and made his fingers itch. His throat closed around the “No” that he should say. To be weightless, just for a few minutes, to be free and untethered by gravity once again, was a prospect he couldn’t bear to refuse. “A really, really quick ride,” he said, barely hearing his own words. “Just for like five minutes. Can’t hurt, right?”

            “Wonderful,” Lotor smiled. He stood up and held out a hand. Lance stared at it for a long moment, struggling for the will to reach out and take it. Lotor had just started to withdraw it when his arm shot out and his hand snagged Lotor’s. The two of them looked at each other in surprise for a moment. Lance’s mouth went dry at the sensation of Lotor’s glove, soft and leathery and warm with body heat. Still, he let Lotor pull him to his feet and followed him outdoors.

            The second Lance grasped the controls of the little island-hopper ship, he felt a profound sense of home. He belonged in this chair, behind these controls. Tension left his chest in a whoosh with his breath and he relaxed. Lotor was standing over him and watching as Lance flicked the switches to prepare for takeoff. Through the windshield, he could see Narti had come outside the shack and was standing by the door, Kova on her shoulder. He glanced over his shoulder at Lotor.

            “Are you going to strap in, or—?”

            “I’ll just watch from the ground,” Lotor told him, stepping out of the ship. “Enjoy.” Yet another bit of tension eased in his chest with Lotor out of the ship, and Lance let a grin spread across his face. Making a last check that everything was running as it should, he lifted into the air.

            Every kid got to play with a simulator these days. Local arcades were dirt cheap, and even if their simulations were shaky and prone to crash, lines could run out into the street on a weekend. Lance had found his way to the simulator after looking into the sky and deciding that whatever it took to get to the stars, he’d learn to do it. But he hadn’t fallen in love with flying until the first time he’d done it for real.

            He could still recall the pilot school ship in perfect detail – it was the smallest, slowest thing in the world. The switches were worn down by hundreds of oily fingers until their labels were almost illegible. The stick had been chipped, with one sharp edge that could catch on your ring finger if you weren’t careful. A hoverbike was probably a far more exhilarating experience, objectively speaking. But that first moment of liftoff from the ground, Lance had felt his entire soul lift into the air, and he wasn’t sure it had ever come back down. He belonged to the sky and the stars.

            He hardly even noticed his own whooping as he ascended, flying tight circles above the caves. He could see his hoverbike where he had left it, a little distance away and around a cliff from the shack. He saw Lotor gazing up at him, and Narti standing stoically by the door. The grin he wore now could have cracked his cheeks. He decided, abruptly, to do something fancy, to really impress Lotor. He’d done it in the simulator, when Iverson wasn’t around to catch him – he was sure he could replicate it without trouble. He pulled into a loop-de-loop with a bit of an uncertain shudder and came out of it at an awkward angle, but he did it. Then, he did it again, slightly bigger, and it went off without a hitch. He shrieked with joy as gravity reversed, crowing triumph as he climbed into the brilliantly blue and open sky. By the time he finally descended, drifting slowly to the ground, he was sweaty and panting.

            Lotor applauded when he climbed out and Lance felt himself blush, waving off the praise. “I was just goofing around. I haven’t gotten to fly – actually fly – in a long time.” Lotor shook his head, coming forward.

            “That was fantastic, Lance,” he said warmly. “Truly.” Lance rolled his eyes.

            “Keith did some pretty wild things whenever he got into the pilot’s chair,” he said, and immediately bit his lip.

            “Well, he’ll have to show me what he can do after we rescue him and the others from Allura,” Lotor said. “Come on, you look like you could use another glass of water.”

            Lance wasn’t sure how it happened, only that he and Lotor fell to talking, trading stories about Earth and other planets across the universe. As much as Lotor still sent spikes of nervousness through Lance, they began to abate the longer they talked, and he couldn’t deny he was dying of curiosity. An entire universe of planets out there that he could learn about was well worth a few reservations about the source of his information. Lotor proved a meticulous storyteller, painting pictures for Lance of planets with golden skies, forests made of metal trees, of fields of crystals as deadly as they were beautiful. Lance couldn’t imagine Earth being particularly interesting to him after all that, but he told stories about his family, about dreaming of the stars, and about the Garrison. It wasn’t until the grumbling of his stomach caught up with him that Lance glanced up and saw with a start that the sun had set.

            “Oh, _shit_ ,” he said, leaping to his feet. “I have to go – that hoverbike should have enough battery stored but I really shouldn’t try riding it at night if I can help it – and I need to get to home to cook dinner – oh, God, Cal…” He bit his lip. “Cal is probably… Cal’s going to be so pissed. Maybe I should…” He patted his pockets. “ _Shit_ ,” he swore again. “You didn’t drop my phone when you were carrying me out of the cave, did you?”

            “Not that I noticed,” Lotor said mildly.

            “Well, I don’t really want to go back in and have another episode like the last one,” Lance said. He shifted from foot to foot, feeling jittery. “God, I can’t believe I lost my phone and didn’t even notice – would it be possible for you to check for me?”

            “I’ll go back and look tomorrow when the sun comes up,” Lotor said. “There’s no danger of rain and no person is going to come along and pick it up. If I find it, I’ll give it back to you on Thursday.”

            “Okay,” Lance said. “Look, this was— Thanks again, for helping me out. And it was, uh, nice getting to know you. I’ll see you in a couple days.”

            “Are you sure you’ll be alright on the hoverbike?” Lotor asked. Lance waved him off.

            “Yeah, no, I’ll definitely be okay, we’re not _that_ far from town. I just should really, really get back.” Lotor stood and inclined his head.

            “It’s been a pleasure, Lance,” he said. “I look forward to seeing you again soon.” Lance gave him a brief nod before darting out the door.

*

            As he eased open the door to Cal’s apartment, it looked dark, and for a moment he wondered if Cal had already gone to bed. But then he stepped inside and saw a single lamp by the sofa still lit. Cal had sprung to his feet at the door opening, and the moment he saw Lance, his face went dark with anger.

            “Where. The hell. Were you,” he said, his voice flat with fury in a way that Lance had never heard before. Lance paused in the doorway, taken aback.

            “Out,” he replied shortly, bending down to slip his shoes off.

            “Out where?”

            “Just out. In the town. Nowhere special,” Lance said. He heard Cal striding across the room and stood back up to find them standing nose to nose. Cal took a hand and brushed it sharply across Lance’s chest. A puff of dirt and sand came free.

            “Out in the town, but covered in sand,” he said. He walked over to Lance’s laundry bag and upended it. The clothes dropped to the floor in a heap, followed by a small shower of sand. “There is sand on practically all of your clothes. It’s been in the shower. You’ve tracked it in here almost every day. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? At first I thought you were just going to that hoverbike place and riding along the edge of town, but I went looking for you today after the police station and they said they haven’t seen you in a month. So where the hell are you going?” Lance didn’t answer, staring Cal down. “Are you looking for Hunk and Pidge? Are you going back into that desert, Lance?” He stayed silent. “Answer me!”

            “Why? It’s none of your damn business!” Lance shouted. “You’re my brother, not my babysitter. I’m almost eighteen years old, Cal, and I’m allowed to make my own decisions without you scrutinizing every single one of them.” He shoved him out of the way. “I’m tired, and I want to get food and sleep. Can’t you leave me alone for just one night?”

            “No, apparently I can’t!” Cal said, throwing out an arm to block him. Lance stepped back, outrage growing on his face. “I called your therapist, and she says you’ve missed the last three sessions, and then emailed her yesterday to cancel all future appointments. You stood up Louisa for lunch yesterday. You remember something that happened but refuse to tell me about it. And now you just up and vanish for a day – apparently into the desert that almost killed you! Something’s wrong, Lance. Why can’t you just tell me what it is?” Lance felt cold all over, anger crystallizing in icy stillness, growing harder and harder with everything Cal said. He spoke slowly and deliberately, clinging onto composure.

            “I’ve had something weird as all hell happen to me, and I am just trying to deal with that as best I can, okay?” Lance tried to lay a placating hand on Cal’s arm, but he flinched away. “But you’re being invasive. You don’t get to know where I am all the time!”

            “You can’t go into that desert, Lance! That place is dangerous!”

            “I can take care of myself!”

            “But what if you can’t? Something could happen to you and I wouldn’t be able to help—”

            “That still doesn’t make it your business!” Lance exploded. “Where do you get off telling me that I ought to, to provide you my itinerary or whatever, and—”

            “ _I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD_!” Lance jumped, falling back a step, staring wide-eyed at Cal. Cal’s shoulders heaved with breath. “ _Do you understand that, Lance? Do you have any idea what that was like? I had to struggle to remember what the last conversation we had was, when was the last time I had seen your face, because I needed to know, I needed to fix it in my mind forever. I attended your goddamn fucking funeral, Lance. I thought I’d never get to celebrate your graduation, or watch you become a pilot, or hear one of your stupid jokes again. I thought you’d died without ever getting to the stars. I thought you were gone. I thought you were fucking gone. I can’t… I can’t tell you what that felt like. I thought I would have to celebrate every single Christmas, every single birthday, without you. I just felt… empty. I felt so fucking hollow. And then… And then a miracle happened. You came back to life. And I am so, so fucking scared of losing you again, Lance, because I can’t. I can’t do that a second time._ ”

            In his entire life, Lance had only seen Cal lose his composure so badly that he lost his English once before. Cal had been ten, Lance just barely turned six. Cal’s appendix had burst after a long day of what they had thought had just been a bad stomachache. The image of Cal writhing on the floor, clutching his abdomen, his English cracking and breaking and failing him until he let forth a stream of Spanish invective so filthy that, in any other circumstance, their grandmother might have resorted to washing his mouth out with soap, was burned onto Lance’s brain. He had never felt so helpless and so horrified. He and Louisa had sat in the hospital waiting room all night, falling asleep and jerking back awake against each other’s shoulders. The relief when the doctors came back to say he would be fine had run through Lance’s entire body, so that he had practically collapsed with it. Only Louisa’s ironclad grip on his arm had kept him upright.

            Cal was staring at him. Lance mouthed silently for a moment, scrambling for a response.

            “ _I didn’t… I’m not trying to scare you_ ,” he said. “ _Cal, I didn’t realize_ —”

            “ _Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on with you_?”

            “ _I want to!_ ” Lance said. “ _But I can’t, because… you wouldn’t believe me even if I could_.”

            “ _Try me. Please, Lance. I want to help_.” Cal’s eyes were so earnest Lance thought they might tear his heart out.

            “ _Aliens_ ,” he blurted out. “ _Honest to God, Cal, I know how that sounds, but just, please believe me_. _I disappeared because of aliens, and the Garrison knows about it, and they specifically told me not to tell you, but I can’t keep lying, God, Cal, I just can’t._ ” Cal had gone still. His expression was unreadable in the dim light. Lance’s stomach sank into his feet as the silence stretched on.

            “ _I’m calling Mamá and Papá_ ,” Cal said finally, quietly. “ _You need help, Lance. You need to go home_.” Lance grabbed his hair, his fingers curling and pressing against his temples.

            “ _I’m not crazy! Cal, I swear, I know it sounds insane but please. I need you to believe me. Going home is not the answer._ ”

            “ _I’m trying to help you. Please, please just go home. If you really believe aliens… abducted you, or whatever, then you need serious help. It’s obviously not safe for you here, wandering off into the desert._ ”

            “ _Fine. Fine!_ ” Lance tasted bile on his tongue. “ _It was a poorly timed joke. Aliens aren’t real. You got me_.”

            “ _I’m still calling Mamá and Papá._ ”

            “ _I won’t leave. You can’t make me._ ”

            “ _Like hell I can’t_.”

            “ _I’ll go to the Garrison. They can give me my old dorm room back and I can continue my sessions with Dr. Ito_.” Lance gave him a steely glare. “ _But I’m not going home. You can’t make me, and neither can Mamá and Papá._ ”

            “ _Fine. If you want to go to the Garrison, fine. I guess between them and Louisa there should be enough people to keep an eye on you_.” Cal’s voice was flat.

            “ _Don’t call Mamá and Papá_ ,” Lance said, working to keep the desperation out of his voice. More than ever, he couldn’t go back to Cuba. It would drive him insane.

            “ _Fine_ ,” Cal said. “ _But I’m calling Louisa_.”

            “ _Fine_ ,” Lance answered, hunching his shoulders. He started to move away, towards his air mattress, his appetite for dinner vanished. He paused, turning back slightly. “ _Cal? I… really am sorry. I didn’t realize how… I didn’t think about how it would have felt to you, I just_ —” Cal reached into a pocket and hurled something at Lance’s head. He dodged it just in time, and it hit the bookcase behind him with a clack, falling to the floor. Lance bent down and picked it up. It was a pill bottle, and he squinted to read the label in the dark. Startled, he looked back up at Cal. “ _Prozac?_ ” he asked. “ _But… since when…?_ ”

            “ _When do you think_ ,” Cal said. He stalked back into his room, slamming the door in Lance’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cal I'm so so sorry
> 
> Please leave a comment!!!! It makes me so happy to see you guys excited about this fic :D


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive! And I am SO SORRY about the long wait between updates. I PROMISE it will not be as long until the next one. I plan to get a lot of writing done over Thanksgiving, so ideally, there might even be another update before the end of the month. Work and stress just killed my sleep schedule all of October :/
> 
> Please be warned, for this chapter, if Lancelot is a ship you find extremely squicky, this is... probably gonna make you uncomfortable. This chapter gets closer to Lancelot than I originally thought this fic would

            The walls were empty. They were stark and smooth, without so much as a crack or a bump to betray a single flaw. They were clean and professional and completely blank. They left far too much empty space for the chattering in Lance’s head, filling the quiet with doubts and what-ifs and half-baked apology scripts. He ran through the fight with Cal over and over again, his brain carving a rut into the memory with all its worrying. Louisa’s hand on his shoulder made him flinch with surprise. He turned to face her, trying to smooth over his expression.

            “Must be weird to be back here, huh?” she asked. He heard the tiny catch at the end of the playful lilt in her voice.

            “You have no idea,” he responded, his voice light and easy, even though that was the real answer as well. She couldn’t understand what it was like to be back there, in a room that wasn’t really his room. Back at the Garrison without a uniform. Back at the Garrison without a class schedule or simulations to run. Back at the Garrison without Hunk. None of this was _right_. He was living in some kind of parallel reality that mirrored his own but reflected everything back distorted.

            “I wasn’t sure if you remembered the dining hall hours, so I just stopped by to remind you – dinner’s ready, they’ll be serving for another hour and a half. I’ll need to eat pretty quickly and then get back to studying, but if you have any friends you wanted to catch up with…?” She let it trail off into a question that he didn’t know how to answer. His friends were missing. That was the whole point. That had been the whole point for over two months now.

            “I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. “If you need to eat fast then go ahead, I’ll catch up.” Louisa nodded. Her hand tightened on his shoulder for a brief moment, and then she was gone, and there was only the massive blank wall in front of him again.

            The Garrison had been a little _too_ happy to accommodate his request to move back in. He thought Captain Seitz must have pulled some strings, because he doubted Iverson was keen to have him around again. That made him leery of what exactly the Garrison thought they might get out of his conversations with Lotor, but it wasn’t like he really had a choice. Cal had barely looked him in the eye for the past few days.

            He shook himself out of his thoughts, pulling back from the rut in the memory of their argument, and stood up, stretching. Louisa had been a saint about the whole thing. He wasn’t sure how much Cal had told her, but she had to know that Lance looked like he was not in the best place right now. Yet not once had she pushed him to talk about it or questioned his decision. The least he could do would be to go eat dinner with her.

            He paused before he went out the door, glancing back at his half-unpacked suitcase. Quickly, he knelt down beside it, and pulled Kent’s journal out from under his clothes. Glancing around the room, he settled for stuffing it under the mattress. Old-fashioned, but effective.

            It was probably a pointless exercise, bringing Kent’s journal with him. He’d read and pored over every single page. He didn’t need to read it again. Still, he wasn’t sure when the next time he might be able to walk around unsupervised would be. He might not make it back to Kent’s house for months. It didn’t feel right not bringing something with him.

            He straightened up, pulling his jacket back down over his forearms, and left the room, trying not to betray the pounding in his chest.

*

            “ _Lance_?” He looked up from his noodles with a start, seeing a cadet with wide brown eyes staring at him disbelievingly. “I heard you were— But I thought— Are you _back_?”

            “Hey, Farah,” he said, grinning nervously. “Uh… what’s up?” She ran a hand across her forehead, fingers shoving at the stray curls of hair escaping her hijab.

            “What _happened_ to you?” she demanded. “And Hunk? And Pidge? They were so vague on the news, and no one here had heard anything from you after you reappeared, and… None of us knew _what_ to think.” Lance shrugged, glancing sideways at Louisa. She feigned disinterest, continuing to shovel noodles into her mouth, but he knew that gleam of intensity in her eyes.

            “I… don’t know what happened,” he admitted. “I woke up in the hospital with amnesia, and it hasn’t gotten any better. That’s… that’s why I’m back. Dr. Ito, one of the psychologists here, he’s trying to help me.” Farah’s eyes roamed over him, as if she still could not quite process or accept his presence.

            “Can I… can I sit?” she finally asked, quietly. Lance glanced at Louisa, who just shrugged and slid over one seat. Lance gestured for Farah to sit down. She lowered herself carefully into the chair. She pressed both her hands flat on the table in front of her. Her eyes were downcast, fixed on the scratches and dents in the table. “Lance, I…” She paused, took a breath, and started again. “We were… we were all really worried about you. Lauren was the last person who saw you or Hunk and she was a mess about it for _weeks_. I know we weren’t exactly _close_ but…” She took a deep breath and finally looked up and met his eyes. “It was scary. No one understood what could possibly have happened to you three. We all… We all basically thought you were dead.” Lance flinched. Louisa didn’t, but he saw her fork pause halfway to her mouth and tremble just slightly before she aggressively bit off the rest of the noodles. Farah grimaced. “Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t… It’s just, I’m glad… I’m really glad you’re okay.”

            “Uh… yeah, me, me too,” Lance said uncertainly. “So…” He shifted forward in his chair, shifting his tone and his smile to a flirtatious mask. “Does that mean that you want to _run some drills_ with me once I’m a real student again?” Farah’s mouth twisted and she stood up, shoving the chair backward.

            “You’re _insufferable_ ,” she said.

            “Aw, come on, I’m just trying to get back to normal here!” Lance called after her, but she had already stalked away. Louisa looked up from her noodles.

            “Smooth,” she said.

            “Shut up,” Lance replied.

            “Do me a favor and never try to flirt in front of me again, little bro.”

            “Well you’re clearly the worst wingman ever anyway,” he grumbled, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms. Louisa took another big bite out of her noodles, munching and swallowing as she watched him.

            “Trust me, no wingman can save you,” she said eventually. “I just conducted a study and the results are conclusive.” Lance snorted.

            “What was the data in this so-called study?”

            “Your face.”

            “You’re going to have noodles for a face if you’re not careful!”

            “No skin off my back,” Louisa laughed. “Ace on the street, ace in the sheets.”

            “Nobody is ever going to love you with your noodle face.” Lance picked a single noodle out of his bowl and flicked it across the table with his fork, where it landed just short of her. “You’re going to die alone.”

            “When I meet the right guy, he’ll look beyond my noodley nose and mouth and love me for who I am on the inside. And then he’ll be very grateful that I don’t care about kissing him.”

            “And _I’m_ the one who’s doomed?” Lance made a sound of derision, blowing air between his lips and rolling his eyes. “You’re delusional. You’ll die alone in your fantasy world.”

            “Just so long as you don’t let them use carnations at my funeral. You know I can’t stand carnations.”

            “Kudzu only, you got it.”

            “Perfect.”

            Louisa swallowed her last bite of noodles, and then stuffed her textbook back into her bag and stood up. “I’ve got to run – I’ll see you around tomorrow, yeah?”

            “Yeah,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “See you tomorrow.”

            She vanished into the press of students, leaving him with only a blank table and his own mostly-empty bowl of noodles beside him. He clasped his hands and stared at them for a long moment. His thoughts threatened to crowd in against the edges of his mind again, growing louder despite the hum of activity around him. Suddenly, someone settled in the chair across from him, startling him and making him jerk his head up. It took him a moment to recognize the man in front of him.

            “Dr.— Dr. Ito,” he said, staring. Dr. Ito smiled bemusedly.

            “Indeed,” he said. “I sent you an email an hour ago, but I suppose you might have missed it. I just wanted to let you know that, even though we’ve been delaying our next session due to your moving back to the Garrison, I would be ready to see you first thing tomorrow morning.” Lance swallowed past the lump in his throat. The double meaning in Dr. Ito’s words made that nauseating stickiness come back, leaving the taste of something foul on his tongue.

            “Tomorrow works,” he said carefully, trying not to betray the tremble in his voice. “I’ll see you then.” Dr. Ito smiled.

            “Excellent,” he said.

            As he left, Lance took a gulp from his water glass to try and clear away the taste in his mouth. He felt much more comfortable around Lotor after the afternoon spent in his company, but his face still evoked some kind of primal fight-or-flight response. Far worse than that, though, was the secrecy of the whole affair. It made him feel dirty and untrustworthy. And more than anything in the world, he hated lying to Louisa.

            He was sure Cal had poured out his frustrations to Louisa at length, recounting their fight, but he was almost certain Cal had omitted his outburst about aliens. He didn’t know whether Cal had accepted it as a poorly timed joke or what, but even Louisa would have felt the need to confront him about _that_. Still, her not knowing managed to make it worse. He never lied to Louisa. Even when the two of them told bald-faced faslehoods to their mamá and the entire family, they still had always told each other the truth. They whispered it to each other between fits of giggles while their mamá tried fruitlessly to track down the culprit of their pranks and they murmured it at night in the space between their beds.

            He saw Farah across the hall, now holding a tray with her dinner, talking to two of her friends. She caught him staring and they held one brief moment of eye contact before she turned away. Lance sighed, slumping in his chair and fiddling with the cuffs on his jacket. Preoccupied with Hunk and Pidge and Kent, and now Lotor, he hadn’t let himself think about the uphill battle that would be returning to the Garrison – truly returning, as a student. For all he knew, Iverson might use all the months he’d missed as an excuse to kick him out for good. He hadn’t exactly seemed pleased to see him the other day. Maybe it would be better to find another path to the stars. There were other flight schools. They were primarily dedicated to transportation and a sort of extraterrestrial janitor duty – cleaning up space junk, replacing old satellites instead of leaving the dead ones to drift uselessly, that kind of thing. Still, it was better than nothing.

            He suppressed a groan when he caught sight of yet another person approaching the table. He’d been back for less than twenty-four hours and somehow he was already more popular than he’d been for the year and a half he had spent there. This person, however, did not sit down, but stopped beside the table, a silhouette in his peripheral vision. He turned to find an unfamiliar cadet standing beside him, the orange uniform too tight around his neck and too short in the sleeves.

            “Commander Iverson wanted me to deliver a message to you, uh…” His eyes ran uncertainly over Lance’s civilian clothing. “Sir. He said that he wanted you to know that you are welcome to use the simulator if no other students have booked it. He said your old access code has been reactivated, sir.” Lance stared. The cadet shifted uncertainly from foot to foot. “Uh… sir?”

            “Iverson _wants_ me to use the simulator?” he burst out. The cadet blinked rapidly.

            “I… suppose so, sir,” he said.

            “Don’t call me— I’m probably below even your rank now, you don’t have to call me sir,” Lance said distractedly. “But I… even if he cared, which does _not_ make sense, why didn’t he just send this to me in an email, or something? Why… What?” The cadet shrugged.

            “I just do what he tells me to do,” he said. “Can I… go now?”

            “What? Yeah, yes, yeah, go,” Lance stuttered. The cadet turned and hurried away, casting one bemused glance over his shoulder. Lance stood up, shoving his bowl away from him. That was too many unsettling visits for one night, he decided. Abruptly, he wanted nothing more than to fall into a bed and go to sleep.

*

            The trip to the underground conference room where he had met Lotor the first time had not become any less unsettlingly, but at least Lotor’s appearance didn’t immediately make his pulse start thundering in his ears this time. That was reserved for the bizarre and motley crew of aliens behind him.

            “Lance!” Lotor greeted him warmly, rising to shake his hand. The gesture was so normal and human that Lance stretched his own hand out in response without even thinking about it. Only when he felt the light press of Lotor’s slightly-too-long-and-sharp fingernails did he falter, pulling his hand back a moment too soon. “I want you to meet some people. These are my generals, trusted advisors, and close friends. They have been my primary assistance in everything I do – including in our research here on your planet.” He stepped aside to give Lance a better view, and for a moment, he wondered if he might faint.

            One of the four aliens looked similar enough to Lotor – she shared his purple coloring, pointed ears, yellow eyes, and otherwise relatively human features – but she had purple hair instead of white, and her skin was paler, almost bluish. “This is Axca,” Lotor said. There was warmth in his voice that Lance had only heard in tiny flashes before – he was genuinely proud of these women. “My second in command.” Axca met Lance’s eyes with an intensity that made him shrink back. Then she nodded once. “The pink one is Ezor.”

            “Hi!” Ezor said, waving. Her voice was bright and bubbly and she was almost certainly the most alien looking of the lot. Lance had to force his eyes away from the bizarre patterned crest that rose from her head and elongated down her back.

            “The stoic one is Zethrid,” Lotor continued. Zethrid glared at Lance with such intense and open animosity that he stumbled back a step. “And the quiet one is Narti.” Lance glanced sideways at Lotor. There was a wink in his voice and his words as he reintroduced Narti. Lance watched Kova rubbing herself against Narti’s legs. He licked his lips and stayed quiet. Captain Seitz was watching from the corner.

            “Lotor’s entire team has been invaluable in helping us decode what little we can understand of the carvings around the Blue Lion,” she said. “They are our guests down here.”

            “How many more of you are there?” Lance asked faintly. Lotor smiled and shook his head, his teeth flashing white and sharp behind his lips.

            “Just us. We certainly didn’t want to descend with an army.” He gestured up. “There’s a cloaked ship in orbit around your planet with a crew on board. They negotiate our communications and supply line to the Empire and the like, but there’s no need for them to all come to the planet’s surface.” Lance nodded, his mouth dry.

            “Right,” he said, his voice cracking. “It’s… a pleasure to meet you all.” Ezor giggled.

            “We’ve _heard_ a great deal about you, Blue Paladin,” Zethrid growled. “Why should we trust that you’re on our side?” Lance took another step back, glancing uncertainly at Lotor.

            “I’m not on _anybody’s_ side,” he protested. “I barely even know what’s happening, still. I don’t remember a thing about the Atlanteans.”

            “Alteans,” Lotor corrected. “Don’t interrogate our friend, Zethrid, he’s here to help.” Lance glanced across the array of aliens and swallowed.

            “What exactly do you think I can do to help _you_ , anyway?” he asked.

            “If you could regain your memories, it could potentially serve us well in our fight against the Alteans. The witch-queen may have shared battle strategies with you and your fellow Paladins. At the very least, you would be able to give us more information about Voltron.” Lance shoved his hands into his pockets, curling his fingers into fists. The air in these underground tunnels was freezing.

            “If you have any suggestions for getting my memories back, I’m all ears,” he said. Ezor tilted her head in curiosity at the idiom, but let it slide.

            “In fact, we do,” Captain Seitz said. “If you would all follow me?”

            She led Lance, with Lotor and his generals trailing behind, to one of the other doors along the underground hallway. It opened onto some kind of lab, although all the workstations were dark. A single computer screen-saver spun, providing a faint light before Captain Seitz flicked the switch and everything came up harsh and fluorescent. Lance blinked rapidly, trying to adjust his eyes, and spotted a table in the middle of the lab. Laid out on the table were pieces of what looked like white and blue armor, much of it scorched or scraped.

            “We recovered this from the sight of your crash,” Captain Seitz said. “According to Lotor, this is the armor of one of the Paladins, presumably your own.”

            Lance had frozen, his feet unwilling to shift him further forward. His heart was pounding against his ribs. Lost memories whispered to the edge of his brain, but nothing came into focus. He swallowed against a dry throat. The sound of his own name made him flinch wildly. He spun to find Lotor looking at him, concern tightening his features. “Are you alright?” Lotor asked. Lance simply nodded, dry mouthed, unsure whether he would be able to speak. He took a few hesitant steps forward, until he was just close enough to brush his fingers over one of the armor pieces. He felt a shiver pass through his entire body, but remembered nothing.

            His fingers continued to run lightly across the armor, caressing its edges. It felt familiar, like an old and cozy hoodie. There was something else on the table, a strange device made of the same material and pattern as all the rest, but clearly not a piece of armor. It had a handle through the middle.

            “What’s this?” Lance asked, wrapping his fingers around the device and lifting it. Abruptly, with a flash of white-blue light, it expanded into some kind of gun. Lance yelped and dropped it in surprise. He stumbled backward, tripped over his own feet, landed on his ass, and scooted frantically backward from the device. As soon as it had left his hand, however, it had retracted into its original form. He looked up at Lotor.

            “That,” Lotor said, “is a bayard. Each Paladin has one. It takes the form of the weapon best suited to you. It helps make the Paladins formidable opponents even outside of their lions.”

            Captain Seitz’s heels clacked against the floor as she hurried over to Lance’s side. He looked up, expecting an offered hand, but her eyes were gleaming, fixed on the bayard. “Pick it up again,” she said.

            “What?”

            “Pick it up again,” she ordered. “It hasn’t responded to any of our researchers in this manner.” Out of the corner of his eye, Lance spotted an exasperated look on Lotor’s face.

            “I did tell you it would only respond to a Paladin,” he said.

            “Pick it up.”

            “Okay, okay, sheesh, I’m picking up the stupid alien weapon.” Lance licked his lips, got to his knees, and carefully reached out and grasped the bayard again. Once again, it transformed into a gun, which he hefted up to inspect.

            “Fascinating,” Captain Seitz muttered above him. “Can you force it to take on a different form?” Lance looked up at her in disbelief.

            “Lady, I don’t even know how I’m making it take _this_ form,” he said. Captain Seitz pressed her lips together in tight displeasure.

            “A project for another time, perhaps,” she said. She glanced at her watch. “You ought to get back upstairs if you don’t want to miss lunch,” she said brusquely. Lance, carefully setting the gun back on the table, where it retracted once again to its original form, glanced at her in disbelief. Lunch would continue serving for almost two hours.

            “Before you go, I think you dropped this back in the conference room,” Lotor said.

            “My phone!” Lance glanced again at Captain Seitz, and then swallowed and composed himself. “Wouldn’t want to lose that,” he said. “Thank you, Prince Lotor.” Lotor waved his free hand.

            “Just Lotor,” he said. “No need to stand on ceremony here.” Lance reached out and grabbed the phone from Lotor’s outstretched hand, his fingers brushing over his glove once again.

            “Thanks, Lotor,” he said, grinning.

            “You’re welcome.” Lotor’s smile still had too many teeth, but it seemed genuine. “Shall I expect to see you again in a few days?”

            “Sure, I guess.” Lance shrugged. “I think I just come in when they tell me to, now.”

            “I will look forward to it,” Lotor said. There was an edge to his voice that set Lance’s heart racing, but he shoved it aside. He was going to get comfortable around Lotor unless he had proof that he shouldn’t be.

* 

            A few hours later, Lance was sitting in his room flipping back through some of the Garrison textbooks available on the school computer system, when his phone pinged. It lit up in an orange strip with a notification for a new message in an app he didn’t recognize. Squinting in confusion, he pressed his thumbprint to the screen to unlock the phone and noticed with a start some kind of messaging application that had definitely not been there when he lost the phone, hidden on the very last page of his apps, inside a folder with a bunch of miscellaneous things like his calculator and a stupid sound effects program he used to tease and annoy Hunk. He tapped on it. The message read:

> **Lotor:** I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty to install a small piece of software on your phone while I was waiting to give it back to you. Now we can talk without Captain Seitz sticking her nose in all of our business. Fancy a late night coffee?

            Lance pursed his lips. On the one hand, the idea of Lotor having access to his phone for almost a week, and actually installing software on it, made his skin crawl all over. On the other hand, any information the alien was willing to share, he wanted to know, even if it might be a lie.

            Ultimately, the strangeness of the question decided him. He couldn’t leave something like that unanswered.

> **Lance:** Late night coffee? Are you asking me on a date? ;)

It took several minutes for Lotor to reply.

> **Lotor:** It would seem awfully early in our friendship for that kind of development

Lance stifled a chuckle behind his hand as he typed.

> **Lance:** Oh man, if you think that’s fast, you would be SCANDALIZED to learn how soon some people start trying to make moves on Earth

 He leaned back in his chair, biting the knuckle of his thumb, before he added the next line.

> **Lance:** Besides, that wasn’t a ‘no’

After a long enough silence that Lance started to wonder if he’d actually offended him, Lotor finally responded:

> **Lotor:** Perhaps if your ears were not quite so strange looking

Lance snorted.

> **Lance:** Yeah, well, purple’s not really my color anyway.
> 
> **Lance:** Anyway
> 
> **Lance:** yes let’s talk
> 
> **Lance:** How, without Captain Seitz around?
> 
> **Lotor:** Come down after 10PM. Dr. Ito will be gone by then. Knock on the door and Axca will let you in
> 
> **Lance:** Got it

*

            He stopped outside Dr. Ito’s door, his mouth suddenly dry again. His heart wasn’t pounding with the same intense, instinctual need to run away as the first time he had met Lotor, but he couldn’t stop the fundamental terror that this was somehow _wrong_. He didn’t trust Lotor, he didn’t trust Captain Seitz, he was beginning to wonder if he should trust anyone who had ever talked to the Garrison at all.

            REMEMBER THE GARRISON LIES.

            Lance’s hand tightened into a fist.

            “This is stupid,” he muttered. “I’m putting more trust in Kent the desert hermit conspiracy freak than in the government organization that I’ve wanted to work for since I was nine. Pull it together, Sanchez.” He took a deep breath. “They’re aliens,” he reasoned. “Of course they freak me out. They’re a species that doesn’t belong on this planet. Of course they look weird. You don’t have to be _offensive_ about it. Where are your manners? Mamá would be ashamed of you.” Thinking of his mother made him think of Cal, which made him wince, but he squared his shoulders. With one last long breath out, he pushed into Dr. Ito’s office. He had to feel the wall blindly for a light switch for a few seconds, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process. When the light came on, it was just the same drab office with an old worn wooden desk as always. Before he could think better of it, he rapped on the door in the back. It opened to reveal Axca, her face impassive. She glanced over him once, and then silently motioned him forward. Lance stepped into the dark hallway, and the door swung shut behind him.

            Instead of taking him to the conference room, she took him into the door next to it, which opened into a surprisingly lush living room. A thick carpet beneath his feet shocked Lance with the sudden change in texture. There were no windows, but the walls were hung with tapestries and oil paintings of Earth scenes: a sunset over water, a winding mountain road, a cobblestone street in early morning fog. Lotor was lounging across a sofa, gesturing something as he spoke to Ezor. Ezor giggled, perched cross-legged on the edge of a chair. Neither Zethrid nor Narti were anywhere to be seen. There were steaming mugs on the table and the entire room smelled like a coffee shop on an autumn morning. Lance breathed the rich scent in and for once, his pulse slowed.

            Lotor looked up and a smile split his face. “Lance!” he called. “Welcome to our humble little living space – the Garrison have given us quite a pleasant little apartment down here. Please, take a seat.” He gestured to the open space on the couch next to him. Lance’s eyes darted to the one open chair, but Axca beat him to it. Swallowing, he made his way around the table and sat very carefully on the edge of the sofa. He breathed as evenly as he could, concentrating on the smell of coffee, and forced himself to look at Lotor’s smile with its too many teeth. “We’ve grown quite fond of this _coffee_ the Garrison has offered us. The Empire doesn’t have anything quite like it.”

            “I think the Reflichans did,” Ezor said, tapping her chin with a single finger. “At least, the smell is similar.”

            “Yes, but unfortunately Reflic has been embroiled in a rather bloody conflict for the better half of a millennium and are not really growing crops anymore,” Lotor said. Lance’s eyes flicked between them. “Sorry, Lance, I was going to ask if you wanted a cup?” His heart did a quick double-beat in his chest to suddenly be making eye contact with Lotor, but he swallowed and nodded.

            “Sure,” he said. “Sounds… good.” Axca shoved her way out of her chair and left the room. “What… what exactly did you want to talk about?” Lance asked. Lotor looked surprised.

            “Oh, well, nothing in particular I suppose. I’m just sure you have plenty of questions, and you might prefer not to ask them with Captain Seitz peering over your shoulder.” His smile became something that almost passed for sympathy. “You’ve been through something incredibly traumatic, Lance. If I can help you reconcile that, I want to help. You deserve to know more about space, and the Galra, and as much as I can tell you about Voltron and the Alteans.” Axca returned, handing a steaming mug of coffee to Lance. He opened his mouth to ask for milk, but then thought better of it.

            “What do the Alteans look like?” he asked instead. Lotor blinked, settling back against the sofa, and chuckled to himself.

            “Yes, I suppose you wouldn’t know, would you? Well, they look remarkably similar to humans, in fact. They have a wider range of hair and eye color, and they have markings – quintessence markings, small spots or lines of skin that are a different color. Frequently those appear on the cheeks, but not always. But otherwise…” His eyes ran up and down Lance. The first sip of coffee was almost too hot to taste, bitter and scalding on his tongue. “Otherwise, they look much the same as you.” His lips twisted around the second sip as his eyebrows drew together.

            “That’s weird,” he muttered. Lotor shrugged.

            “Perhaps not so strange. If your species are similar in appearance, you may be similar in other, deeper ways as well. It could explain why your quintessence is so compatible with the Voltron lions.”

            “Do you think I’ll ever get my memories back?” Lance burst out. Ezor and Axca both froze in their chairs. Lotor’s eyes were fixed on him with an intensity that made him want to shrink away. The mug burned against his hands.

            “I don’t know,” Lotor said finally. “I hope you will, for your sake, but I have no magic spell that can help you. The witch-queen might be able to bring them back with her skill in manipulating quintessence, but she’s just as likely to implant false memories. I would not trust anything she does.” Lance slumped back against the sofa, sighing, his drink between his thighs.

            “I just want to stop being afraid,” he mumbled. “I’m so scared for Pidge, and Hunk, and Shiro, and even Keith… And I’m scared to trust my own judgement, right now, and I’m scared of you, and I’m scared that any moment I’m going to wake up in another hospital with even more time wiped away.”

            Lotor, very slowly and gently, placed a hand on his arm. Lance took a deep, shuddering breath, but did not push him away. “I’m not going to let that happen, Lance,” he said. “I’m going to keep you safe, and I’m going to help you get your friends back.” Lance just nodded wearily. Silence reigned between them for a few minutes, and Lotor took his hand back. Lance did not move. He ran his finger up and down the handle of his mug, the coffee cooling inside. Lotor glanced at Axca and Ezor.

            “Hey Lance!” Ezor said. “Do you want to guess where I’m from?” Lance looked up at her blankly.

            “How could I possibly do that?”

            Her grin dropped into a pout. “Oh yeah, I guess you have no idea what I’m supposed to look like,” she mused. “It must be kinda boring here on Earth.” Her laugh bubbled up like a dozen chiming bells. “I mean, even the _name_ of your planet is boring – it just means _dirt_.”

            “We don’t need to offend him,” Axca said. “Lance is probably very attached to his planet.” Lance spluttered, scrambling for a response.

            “I— I— I mean _yeah_ , it’s… it’s the only one I know? So… yeah I am kind of attached to it. It’s a very nice planet.” Lance felt his cheeks growing hot and sent up a sudden fervent prayer that Galra had no concept of blushing or embarrassment at all.

            “It is indeed, and I hope you’ll get to show us more of it someday,” Lotor said smoothly. “Ezor, why don’t you just _tell_ Lance about Killiko?” Ezor visibly brightened.

            “It’s _huge_ ,” she said, stretching her arms out as wide as they would go. “Like, twice as big as Earth, easy, maybe bigger, and it’s _really close_ to a star, so the daytime gets _really hot_. And we have deserts, full of stuff that’s sort of like your sand, only ours is all these tiny little rock crystals. The only thing that can grow out there are these plants called polloplisks – they have these massive stalks that run straight up like this, and then these big fat white lobs that hang off the top and collect water. We also have four moons, although one of them is pretty much just an asteroid and you usually can’t see it except during the Equinox.”

            “It sounds… really cool,” Lance said, at a bit of a loss. “I mean, I know that sounds like I’m just trying to think of something to say, but really, it sounds amazing.” He managed a small smile. “I used to dream that I’d get to visit places like that. Totally new planets. I mean… I only thought I’d get to visit, like, Venus, or something. I never imagined I’d get to see a _real_ alien planet.” He frowned. “And I guess I did, and then forgot all about it. That’s the stupidest luck I’ve ever heard of.” Lotor chuckled.

            “Personally Killiko’s always been too hot for my taste,” he said. “But it is a strangely beautiful planet.” Ezor sniffed, toying with her crest. “Listen, Lance, you seem a bit tired. You don’t have to stay tonight, but you’re welcome to come down and say hello any time. Dr. Ito is always gone by 9:30PM at the latest. Just send me a message on your phone to let us know that you’re coming.” Lance nodded, carefully placing his still mostly-full coffee on the table.

            “Yeah, I’ll, I’ll be back,” he said. Lotor smiled.

            “Then I look forward to seeing you again soon. Axca will walk you out.”

*

           It became a routine. Lance would talk with “Dr. Ito” three times a week, meeting with Lotor and occasionally one or more of his generals, always accompanied by Captain Seitz. Along with a couple scientists who he did not recognize, they ran the gamut performing tests on him. They took blood samples, urine samples, DNA samples, and hair samples. They had him pick up the bayard and put it down probably two hundred times, studying how it reacted to his presence and his absence. They had him do it blindfolded, or wearing gloves. Eventually they brought him into a different section of their sub-basement and had him try shooting it. The gun handled like it had been made for him alone. He hit every mark he aimed at.

            Lotor was less than helpful during all of this, often simply watching with an amused expression. Occasionally he would offer some cryptic comment on quintessence or the bayard, but mostly he stayed silent. Lance could see Captain Seitz growing irritated with Lotor, her lips pressed tighter and tighter together at the sight of him, but she didn’t dare push him. Most of her probing questions were met with a blithe shrug and an insistence that the Galra knew very little about the Paladins. When they pulled out pictures of the caves and all their markings, he became slightly more helpful, able to translate some of the symbols and help them read the story written on the walls. Lance felt a flutter of trepidation in his stomach the first time they made him sit down and look at the photographs, but fortunately, the mind-splitting headache effect did not seem to translate through camera. Unfortunately, they sparked no more recognition or memory than they had when he had been looking at the papers in Kent’s shack. Nothing Lotor said added much either – the markings said that the lion was waiting for its Paladin, and that events would be set in motion on a certain day. It was nothing they didn’t already know.

            During their late night chats, however, Lotor transformed into an entirely different person. There, he became expansive, telling stories from every corner of the universe, and drinking in the most mundane details Lance had to offer about life on Earth. He always seemed more interested in _Lance_ , specifically, than in anyone else – whenever Lance started to preface a story by saying he didn’t think it was exactly a universal experience, Lotor would wave him off. He would insist that he could learn anything he wanted about Earth in _general_ by using one of the Garrison computers or asking Captain Seitz or Dr. Ito. He wanted to know about _Lance_. What was the Blue Paladin like? What did Lance eat for breakfast? When did Lance first know he wanted to be a pilot? Who were Lance’s childhood friends?

            He saw Zethrid rarely and never at their evening talks, but the other three became regular faces. Ezor in particular seemed to enjoy telling Lance stories of the places she’d been, painting enthusiastically in the air with her hands. He grew to expect her to see her perched on her regular chair, cross-legged and eager-eyed, almost as often as he saw Lotor. Narti never spoke – Lance was pretty sure she couldn’t – but she would occasionally watch, standing in the corner with Kova winding in between her legs. Axca usually only chimed in at Lotor’s prompting, and kept her comments succinct, but she was frequently in the corner, her eyes following Lance and Lotor’s every move intently.

            He had little to do during the day. He ate lunch and dinner with Louisa. Sometimes one of his former classmates would seek him out and ask him to explain what had happened to him and Pidge and Hunk. He learned to extricate himself from those conversations as quickly as possible, no matter how much time the person spent insisting they were just really happy he was okay. Ultimately, they only wanted the gossip, the inside scoop on what had happened. Sometimes he read over old chapters in the Garrison textbooks and tried to start studying – if he ever wanted to come back as a student he’d likely have to take some kind of placement test – but it proved largely useless. He couldn’t concentrate. He wasn’t a student, and there were too many uncertainties for him to even be sure he would ever be one again. He tried to go to the simulator, but it was always booked. He went to Lotor’s underground living room more and more often, and stayed later and later each night.

            The first time he came three nights in a row, Lotor got him to press his thumb into a small electrical device, which he then passed over to Axca. “She’s putting your thumbprint in the Garrison system,” he explained. “Now you can open the door yourself, rather than waiting for one of us to let you in each time.” Lance gaped.

            “But I’m not… I’m not even a proper cadet here anymore, let alone a ranking—” Lotor had actually laughed.

            “Lance, my people had wormhole technology over 10,000 years ago, and you think we can’t hack the Garrison security system? Come on, it’s not like we gave you access to all their confidential files, it’s just a pass that lets you open any door in the building. It will just make our lives all a bit easier.” Lance had swallowed and nodded. He now had access to any door, anywhere in the Garrison.

            Louisa was picking up on the fact that he spent most of the day tired from being up late talking to Lotor, but she continued to say nothing. The most she did was give Lance the occasional piercing gaze as he yawned for the third time over lunch.

            Sometimes their chats extended into messages in the daytime. Lance had no idea what kind of signal or server Lotor was using to send him messages, but he seemed confident no one in the Garrison would be able to hack them. Those conversations were usually briefer, but Lance turned to them in his long hours of boredom to help pass the time.

> **Lance:** So about that weblum (sp?) thing you were telling me about last night… did you say it EATS PLANETS or did I hear that wrong?
> 
> **Lotor:** No, you are correct, it eats planets.
> 
> **Lance:** …well that sounds like the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard of
> 
> **Lance:** So, wait, do you mean you could just be, like, going along your merry way and then suddenly a GIGANTIC WORM descends from space and swallows you and your entire planet whole???? How???? How do you live in a universe with something like that????? How is this not terrifying to you???
> 
> **Lotor:** They only feed on DEAD planets. When there are no longer any living organisms left behind, save possibly for some bacteria and other microscopic organisms, you are left with only the diffused quintessence. Weblums eat the planet and can recycle the diffused quintessence
> 
> **Lance:** … I don’t wanna ask what you mean by recycle
> 
> **Lotor:** They’re generally only present in solar systems where the star has shrunk into a dwarf, and everything has died millennia ago. You’re unlikely to ever encounter one, unless you go looking for it
> 
> **Lance:** Why would anyone go looking for something like that??
> 
> **Lotor:** To get scaultrite.
> 
> **Lance:** … I don’t want to know
> 
> **Lance:** Do I want to know?
> 
> **Lance:** I don’t want to know

            Sometimes, when he finished a conversation with Lotor, he would open up his text history with Cal. The last thing there were a dozen frantic texts from the day he lost his phone in the desert. The string of message boxes looked at him accusingly until the phone went dark and autolocked. He’d sit there for an hour trying to convince himself to text or call. Each time, though, he would finally stuff it away again, shame burning his chest. Cal sent him no messages.

            He did not try to leave the Garrison. That was the deal he had made with Cal, was that he would stay out of the desert if he went to the Garrison. He couldn’t bring himself to break it. Besides, he didn’t think there was much left for him to learn out there anyway. Kent’s journal languished beneath his mattress, untouched.

*

            A few days after Axca registered Lance’s fingerprint into the Garrison system, he came down to find Lotor alone in the dimly lit living room. He stood up when Lance entered.

            “Hey, Lotor. No lovely ladies today?”

            “I thought we might do something a bit different. Follow me.” Curious, Lance followed Lotor as he took him back into the hallway, through a new door, that took them down a staircase, and into a hangar of some kind. Lotor flicked on a light to reveal the same ship Lance had flown out in the desert a couple weeks ago. He was grinning.

            “I thought you might want to fly again,” he said, and Lance’s heart soared right before it plummeted.

            “The Garrison will notice,” he said. “I can’t just fly out without them getting in a twist.” Lotor laughed.

            “Oh but you can. If, that is, you take _my_ ship.” Lance turned to him quizzically. He didn’t see what Lotor did, but a moment later, something shimmered in the hangar, in the empty space next to the little desert hopper. A sleek ship unlike anything Lance had ever seen appeared. His jaw dropped.

            “What—?”

            “This is the ship that I flew down to the surface with,” Lotor said. “It comes fully equipped with cloaking technology, of course. You won’t even be a blip on the Garrison’s radar.” If he wasn’t careful, Lance was actually going to start drooling.

            “I— I can’t fly your ship,” he protested breathlessly. “I’ve never flown anything like that before— I can’t— What if, what if I crash it?” Lotor laughed, dropping a hand onto his shoulder.

            “You flew a _lion of Voltron_ , Lance. I know you don’t remember that, but trust me, my ship is a child’s toy compared to the Blue Lion. I have full confidence in you. Besides, I’ll come with you. I can teach you anything you don’t know.” Lance’s gaze darted hopelessly back and forth between Lotor and the ship.

            “I… I guess just a _quick_ flight… couldn’t hurt,” he mumbled.

            Lotor smiled with too many teeth and led Lance into the ship. Symbols he could not read glowed everywhere, but the cockpit was wonderfully elegant. Soft leather seats cushioned him as he sat down. The controls were perfect – smooth, clean, and simple. There was not so much as misplaced speck of paint anywhere.

            “This wakes up the ship’s engines,” Lotor said gently, pointing to one of the buttons in front of Lance. “Use this to control speed, and this to control direction – you’ll need to turn it like so once you turn on the engines…”

            The ship rose off the floor like a dream. Lance didn’t think he was flying; he was _floating_ , ascending on a cloud. He barely registered Lotor’s hand resting lightly on his shoulder, or Lotor’s breath in his ear as he gave him instruction. He didn’t care. The hangar door opened above them and Lance drifted up and up and up. He could see the stars above them – and this ship could _reach_ them, for real. He could just keep going, flying higher and higher until he lived amongst those sparks of white in the sky. It was better than being drunk, better than being high, better than the best dreams he’d ever had.

            Lotor guided him to level out the ship, and a part of Lance protested, yearning to just keep going _higher_ , but he followed his instructions. They were gliding, and then suddenly they were _flying_ , shooting forward across the desert faster than Lance would have thought possible. He let out a startled laugh. Lotor’s hand came to rest over his own and helped him adjust the speed down, turn the ship, spin it and roll it. He played recklessly with gravity, diving and swerving and climbing. He was so enraptured that he didn’t have the slightest idea how long he had been gone when he looked around and realized he could no longer see the Garrison. Nerves and a hot strand of shame stirred in his stomach.

            “Lotor, we should… we should head back,” he said quietly. “I… I shouldn’t be out in the desert. I don’t even remember which way the Garrison is. That’s… I shouldn’t have done this.” Lotor tilted his head.

            “The Garrison is only a few miles back that way,” he said, pointing. “I… I thought you were enjoying yourself.”

            “I am!” Lance struggled to maintain control over his voice. “I’m enjoying myself more than I have since… ever, maybe. It’s just. I told… I shouldn’t be out in the desert. It’s a dangerous place. I nearly died out here once already. Sorry.”

            He jumped at Lotor’s hands on his shoulders, and his eyes went wide as Lotor gently helped him stand and then pushed him down into the copilot’s chair. “I’ll have you back at the Garrison before you can blink,” he promised. He took the control with a simple surety, twisting them deftly to turn the ship around. Lance watched him, his eyes fixed on his hands.

            “You’re much better at this than I am,” Lance said. Lotor’s hands stilled. The ship slowed to a snail’s crawl. Lotor shook his head.

            “No,” he said. “I am… well trained, and well-practiced. But Lance, it took me years to get this good at piloting this ship. You had never laid eyes on a ship like this before today – at least, not that you remember – and yet you piloted it as if you had been doing so your whole life.” Lotor turned towards him, his eyes meeting Lance’s. “You are _creative_ , Lance. You try everything in sight and if it doesn’t work, you try it again, from a different angle. You needed nothing more than a few words from me to take a run at piloting an alien ship, and you managed it, successfully.” A slight smile curved Lotor’s lips, and for once, Lance saw no teeth. “You should be proud of yourself, Lance. I understand why one of the lions of Voltron chose you.”

            Lance didn’t quite want to admit how long that comment sat warm and comforting inside his chest.

*

            “ _We need to talk_.”

            Lance started at Louisa’s voice, spinning his chair around to look at her. She was in her Garrison cadet uniform, a bag with a tablet and notebooks slung over her shoulder. Her hands twisted absently in front of her, eyes not quite meeting Lance’s. He looked from her face to her hands and back again before he pushed away from the desk, settling his elbows on his knees.

            “ _Okay, sure. What’s up?”_ he asked. Louisa came the rest of the way into the room and plopped down on his bed with a sigh, dropping her bag next to her.

            “ _We need to talk about you, about you being here, and about Cal_.” Lance stiffened.

            “ _Louisa, I swear, I’ll call him eventually, I’m just… I want to give him space._ ”

            “ _He had four months of space, Lance,_ ” Louisa said. Her voice was calm, but there was an edge in it, something tightly wound that he couldn’t quite identify.

            “ _That’s not the same thing at all!_ ” he protested. She held up a hand to cut him off.

            “ _I know. But he spent four months thinking you were gone, and dealing with the trauma of your absence. And right now, he’s probably feeling pretty abandoned all over again._ ”

            Lance sighed explosively, running his fingers through his hair. “ _I didn’t_ abandon _him_ ,” he muttered under his breath. Louisa continued, apparently not hearing him.

            “ _I know Cal isn’t great at_ emotions _, generally speaking, but if you could even just eat dinner together, or something. It might reassure him_.”

            “ _I’m not as certain as you are that he even_ wants _to see me_ ,” he said. “ _We had a… We had a pretty bad argument_.” That made Louisa meet his gaze, levelling him an “are you serious” look of epic proportions.

            “ _Lance. There are six of us. And that’s just siblings, never mind cousins. Do you remember when Beatriz put gum on my yellow dress?_ ” The slightest smile quirked the edge of Lance’s lip.

            “ _Not really, because I spent most of that afternoon hiding in the garden to escape being collateral damage_.” Mischief and pride glittered darkly in Louisa’s eyes.

            “ _If we didn’t have some truly scary sibling fights along the way then what even is the point_?”

            Lance shook his head. “ _This is different, though_ ,” he said. “ _This was… You didn’t see his face. You don’t know…_ ”

            “ _I do_.” Louisa pushed off the bed, pacing as much as she could in the dorm room. Her hands were twisting again. Lance watched, following her motion back and forth. “ _Who do you think he told when he realized it was bad enough that a grief counselor wasn’t going to cut it? He called me the night you two had your fight. He didn’t give me all the details either – but Lance, I don’t care. Whatever shit was said, that can stay between you and him. The point is I_ know _what he’s going through, and I think just getting to talk to you for an evening would be the best thing any of us could do for him._ ” Lance caught her wrist, stopping her in her tracks.

            “ _I don’t want to lie to him_.” The pleading bled through his voice. “ _I…_ ” His tongue caught on his words. He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t tell her the truth. “ _I don’t want to tell him that I’m okay if I’m not. I don’t want to lie about my memories just because I want him to stop asking questions_.” Louisa crouched down next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulder.

            “ _Then don’t_ ,” she said. “ _Make personal stuff off limits. Just go talk to him. Please? For me._ ” Lance let out a shuddering sigh.

            “ _Help me schedule it?_ ” he asked. Louisa’s arm tightened around his shoulder and the ghost of a smile appeared on her face.

            “ _You got it_ ,” she said.

            “ _I need to go back into town anyway,_ ” he said, freeing himself from her arms to turn back to the desk. He lifted his phone, toying with it. “ _That detective guy wants to talk to me again. Actually, I think it’s just— I think Pidge’s mom wants to meet me_.”

            “ _They found his family_?” Louisa asked. Lance laughed.

            “ _I shouldn’t— It’s not funny, it’s just— It’s a long story_ ,” he explained. Louisa settled back down on the bed.

            “ _It’s Thursday_ ,” she said. “ _I only have drill classes tomorrow. Tell me._ ”

*

            The smell of cheap coffee flooded Hopkins’ nostrils. He handed the Styrofoam cup to Colleen Holt with a grimace. He supposed he ought to be grateful he didn’t work around anything that smelled worse than cheap coffee on a regular basis. He already wanted to wash the scent out of every piece of clothing he owned, just to stop the spiral of bad associations that went with it. He suddenly had a great deal of sympathy for anyone who had ever worked in a sewage plant.

            Hopkins wasn’t good at this. He was a decent detective, and yes, he was usually the one to coax coherent answers out of sobbing spouses and silent children. At least, he was a better fit for it than Cho. He’d been doing this long enough to learn what to expect, and to gather up strategies for approaching it. He was a good listener, and he’d learned how to get someone to sit down on a couch for a few minutes and talk to him. When there was nothing left to do but comfort the grieving loved ones, he could do that too, if the moment demanded it.

            But then they _left_. The sister with the missing brother, the husband with the dead wife, the parents with the stolen child. They broke down, they sobbed and clutched at anyone within reach, begging for closure and justice. He gave them the best answers that he could. And then, they pulled themselves together, wiped away the smeared mascara, and they left. They sought out grief counselors and therapists, they contacted lawyers, and they moved on with their lives. He might pass them in the courthouse a few months later. But they left. They weren’t his responsibility anymore.

            He’d never had a case like this, dragging on for months and months – well over half a year now. He didn’t know what to say to these people anymore. He didn’t know how to handle the woman who had been given little more than helpless shrugs for the past five months, whose daughter was still just as lost, only with a great big confusing lie in the middle. He didn’t know what to do about the lanky teenage boy who came into the station once every few weeks, trembling with nerves and uncertainty. He didn’t know what to say when he answered the phone and found one of Hunk’s mothers on the other end, sobbing and desperate for answers. He wasn’t built for all of this uncertainty and emotion. It was going to give him an ulcer if he wasn’t careful.

            Colleen stood suddenly, nearly spilling her coffee. Hopkins turned and saw why: Lance was nervously padding his way through the door of the station, glancing around the desks. He stopped a few steps in, hesitating. Hopkins sighed.

            “I’ll be right back, Mrs. Holt,” he said.

            He padded out into the main station, where Lance spotted him and weaved his way between the desks over to meet him. “Hey,” he said. “So, you wanted me to… meet… Pidge’s mother?”

            “She’s just inside here,” Hopkins said. “She wanted to talk to you.” Both Hopkins and Cho had strongly discouraged Colleen from doing this. They couldn’t see any way that this would help Pidge or Hunk, and it would likely only upset both of them. Eventually Hopkins had only caved because he was worried Colleen was going to track down Lance herself and break into his room if she didn’t get to talk to him.

            Lance paused in the doorway, his eyes running over Colleen in trepidation. “Um, hi,” he said. “So you must be Pidge’s— I, I mean… Ka… tie? Katie? Katie’s mom.”

            “Colleen Holt. And you’re Lance, back from the dead,” Colleen said. Lance’s lips pulled into a smile that better resembled a grimace.

            “That’s me,” he said. He was still standing awkwardly in the doorway. “Should I… uh…” He gestured toward the couch and chairs. Colleen dropped back into her seat, and Lance seemed to take that as an invitation to sit down himself.

            “I just wanted to ask you something, to hear it from your own mouth,” Colleen said. “Please, I know Detective Hopkins has said that you don’t remember anything, but… can you at least tell me for sure that Katie was _with you_?” Lance was already shaking his head.

            “I promise Detective Hopkins was telling the truth. I really don’t remember much of anything.” He hesitated, wetting his lips. “But… I’m pretty sure that whatever Pigdge, Hunk and I did, we did together. I… I can’t guarantee that she’s safe. But I think she’s as safe as I was.”

            Colleen breathed out, long and steady. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I…Do you think there’s a chance she’ll come home safe?” Lance shifted in his seat, uncomfortable.

            “I don’t know. I don’t know how _I_ came home safe.” He swallowed. “But, Pidge is… Katie… Katie is a _genius_. Wherever she is, she’ll find a way to science her way out of it.” The ghost of a smile passed over Colleen’s face. She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, something crashed in the station behind them. All three of them jumped and turned to look at the source of the commotion. A beleaguered officer was attempting to calm down a man and a woman who were standing at the edge of the office desks. They looked like they might come to blows any second. Hopkins couldn’t hear anything clearly from the other side of the glass, but he was sure Detective Uriel would be complaining about it to him later. He turned back to Colleen and Lance, only to see that the latter had zeroed in on the man outside.

            “Lance…?” he began questioningly. Lance, however, did not wait, but stood up and bolted into the station. Hopkins, with an apologetic wave to Colleen, followed him.

            “—the whole _reason_ I got a _restraining order_ in the _first place_ , you creep!” the girl was yelling. “You never knew when to let things go. I thought you were _stalking_ me!”

            “Jess, honey, I just—”

            “We haven’t dated in _five years_ , Chuck. Don’t fucking call me fucking honey.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the man pleaded. “Whatever happened—”

            “Where have you even _been_ , anyway? I haven’t seen you in four years and suddenly you just emerge from the woodwork like you never left.”

            “Jess, please, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Chuck said. Hopkins frowned. Chuck seemed genuinely confused and lost, while the girl kept running backwards around tables to stay out of his reach. Not that that was anything particularly novel, but there was an earnestness in the guy’s expression that didn’t match what the girl was saying about him.

            “Well, _that’s_ a nice change,” the woman scoffed. Chuck just looked lost.

            “You’re the man from the park.”

            Hopkins jumped at Lance’s voice sparking up beside him. His hands were clenched, his eyes wide. He walked forward. Chuck and the woman paused in their argument, glancing over at him. Chuck frowned.

            “Sorry?” he said. “Do I know you?” Lance stopped.

            “I’m… You… You’re the conspiracy guy with the telescope, right?” Chuck looked bemused.

            “Telescope? Conspiracies? What are you talking about?”

            “You met me in the park — I guess a couple months ago? I’m Lance, the guy on the news?” Chuck chewed his lip.

            “Oh yeah, I remember something— you disappeared and they found you in the desert, right?” Lance shook his head.

            “No, but you— you thought I’d been _abducted_. You showed me this notebook, you had pictures…” Chuck spread his arms helplessly.

            “I have no idea what you’re talking about, man.”

            “Is that another thing that you’ve _forgotten_?” Jess asked, undisguised venom and disbelief lancing through her voice.

            “Jess, I swear, I’m not trying to be creepy. I woke up in that park and thought I’d gone insane, I couldn’t even remember where I _lived_. When I remembered your address, I thought—”

            “Wait,” Lance said. “What are you… are you saying you just… forgot…”

            “He forgot everything convenient to him,” Jess said, crossing her arms. “Including, somehow, his manic obsession with aliens, which I thought defined his entire personality.” Chuck tilted his head in confusion.

            “Aliens?” he asked. “What are you talking about?” Hopkins could practically feel every muscle in Lance’s body go taut as a wire. When he glanced over, he had gone almost bone-white.

            “Lance?” he asked quietly. “Why are you—?”

            Before he could finish his sentence, Lance bolted.

*

            He made it all the way into Dr. Ito’s office before he realized that it was the middle of the day and Dr. Ito would actually be there this time. He stood up from his desk, startled, as Lance burst in the door.

            “Lance! Did we have an appointment today that I forgot?”

            “No,” Lance said. The bullet back from town had been torture. Somehow, in all the time it had taken him to get from the police station back to the Garrison, his heart hadn’t stopped racing. “But I need to talk to Lotor.” Dr. Ito’s mouth dropped open slightly.

            “I can’t really— You’d need Captain Seitz to—”

            “Just _let me in_ ,” Lance said. “I need to— this is an emergency.”

            “But I—”

            “NOW.”

            Dr. Ito stumbled back from his desk, pressing his thumbprint into the lock next to the door. “I’m calling Captain Seitz,” he said. Lance paid him no mind, only sprinted past him into the underground hallway.

            He burst through the door to the living room and found Lotor, Zethrid, and Axca sitting around the table. They all looked up in surprise, Lotor and Zethrid coming to their feet. Lotor’s brow was creased with concern.

            “Lance, are you alright?” he asked. Lance stopped short, staring at them.

            “The telescope man,” he said, and stopped, his heartbeat choking him. Lotor and Axca exchanged a glance, and Axca rose fluidly to her feet as well.

            “Who?” Lotor asked.

            “The telescope man. The one I talked about… God, just that first day. The one who had a picture of what he thought was the ship crash-landing. He has amnesia.” Lotor took a step forward.

            “I… don’t see how that’s—”

            “He was at the police station today,” Lance said. “And he’s forgotten _everything about aliens_. It’s— That’s— That _can’t_ be a coincidence. _What did you do_?” Lotor’s lips parted in surprise.

            “I— We didn’t do anything,” he said. Lance shook his head vehemently.

            “No. You— _You_ did something to me, or the Garrison, or both of you together, or— It doesn’t matter.” His hands were pulling on his hair, pressing against his temples. “Give them _back_.”

            “Give who back?” Lance nearly screamed in frustration.

            “Hunk! Pidge! _Give them back_! _Give me back my memories, you colossal_ —”

            “Lance, calm down,” Lotor said.

            “I _will not_ calm down!” he exploded. “You did something, you, you—”

            “Lance, I understand you’re afraid, but unless you want Captain Seitz taking control of this entire discussion, it will need to wait until later tonight, alright?” Lance shook his head, rubbing his fingers into his scalp.

            “I shouldn’t have trusted you. I shouldn’t have trusted _any_ of you. I should have just— I should have—” His words were lost. Tears were threatening to boil over in his eyes. He turned on his heel and ran back into the hallway. Lotor did have a point about one thing: Captain Seitz would be coming to see what had happened, and Lance had no interest in letting her see him in a full meltdown.

            He had a split-second’s warning as he heard footsteps behind him. He half-turned to see Zethrid storming down the hallway towards him, but before he could react, she had seized him around the throat, lifted him one-handed into the air, and slammed him back against the wall. Lance choked and gasped, eyes wide, fingers scrabbling frantically at the iron grip on his neck. He thrashed, kicking at her stomach and ribs, but she simply grunted and squeezed tighter. Lance struggled for air, mouthing like a fish.

            “I don’t care if Lotor thinks you’re pretty,” Zethrid growled. Her yellow eyes glowed with livid hate. “You’re dangerous. You’re dangerous to us, to the Empire, and to _him_. He should have killed you on sight. I’ll just have to do his dirty work, like always.” Lance twisted weakly, trying in vain to break her grip, and she slammed his head back against the wall. Black blotted the edges of his vision, the world blurring and creeping out of existence. Furious roaring filled his ears.

            Abruptly, Zethrid’s hand was ripped from his neck, and Lance fell to the ground, gasping and coughing, sucking in frantic lungfuls of air. His hands pressed hard into the floor, his arms shaking, his entire body shivering. His vision swam slowly back into focus, his heart still pounding against his chest. There was a sound of shouting, and of pounding feet. A moment later, his rescuer dropped to his knees beside him, a hand resting gently on his shoulder.

            “Lance. Are you alright?” Lance took a deep, shuddering breath, and sat back on his feet.

            “I’m okay,” he croaked. “Thanks, Lotor.” A flash of a relieved smile spread across Lotor’s face.

            “Thank the stars,” he said. “When Zethrid ran after you…” Lance shook his head.

            “She just… grabbed me. She said something about me being a danger to you and the Empire…” Lotor’s eyes were murderous.

            “I promise you, Lance, she will never lay a hand on you again.” Lance, hand pressed protectively across the base of his throat, glanced up.

            “I still don’t trust you,” he said. He saw a shadow flit across Lotor’s face for a moment, and then it was gone.

            “Whatever happened with this telescope man must have been very disturbing,” he said, his tone carefully neutral. Lance heard, distantly, the sound of a commotion from Dr. Ito’s office. “I don’t imagine you feel like reporting the whole incident to Captain Seitz right at the moment.” Lance’s heart sank into his feet.

            “No,” he said. “I… no.” Lotor flashed a smile.

            “Right then,” he said. “Through that door, that’s the hangar I took you to before. There’s a hoverbike down there much like yours, I’d suggest using that if you don’t want the Garrison to notice you leaving.” He let his hand rest briefly over Lance’s as he helped him to his feet. “Come back later this evening, and we’ll have a proper talk.”

            Lance nodded numbly. The sound of a commotion was getting louder. Lotor stood in the center of the hallway, facing the door out. With a last glance back, he dove through the door. He scrambled his way through the hangar, found the bike, climbed on board, took the lift up to the hangar door at the top, and shot off into the desert.

            He needed to be away from all of them. He didn’t trust the Garrison. He didn’t trust Lotor. Chuck had forgotten everything he once knew that might have helped. The police couldn’t possibly help him. Cal and Louisa would never believe him if he told the truth.

            Cal, oh, _fuck_ , Cal. He was supposed to meet him at the apartment this afternoon. But there was no way in hell that Lance could look him in the face and lie right now. He rode half-blind, the desert air whipping past his face, his breath shuddering through his torso.

            He felt a flash of tenderness rise in his chest at the sight of the familiar shack. His heart finally slowed as he approached it. He stopped the bike outside and practically fell through the door. Everything was still right where he left it.

            He dropped into the couch with a gasp that morphed into a sob. He leaned back against the cushions, letting tears burn in his eyes until the overflowed and rolled down his face. He cried until he was spent. Exhausted, he leaned his head back and felt his eyes drift closed.

            A loud creak jolted him awake, blinking in confusion. His heart jumped into his throat when he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. He scrambled to his feet. Someone was opening the shack door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers* _guess who_
> 
> Once again, I am really, really sorry about how long it's been since I updated. The next few chapters are going to be a bit... different, but I'm really excited about them and I actually have some significant chunks of the next one already written, so there should DEFINITELY be an update at least in early December if not sooner
> 
> Please leave comments if you're still here and reading ^^ This chapter was the most difficult one yet and except for the end just about every word felt like pulling teeth, so I hope it at least turned out okay to read. I really hope the pacing isn't too screwy and weird.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER IS 15k I'M SO SORRY
> 
> Also this is a good time to remind you/let you know that I began writing this fic back right after S2 had aired

### THREE MONTHS AGO

            “We got our lenses!” Coran crowed in triumph, sprinting into the control room and holding his prize aloft. Allura was sitting on the steps, the mice climbing over – was that her _hair_?

            “Excellent!” she called, dislodging the mice as she turned around. Keith’s jaw dropped at the sight of her hair bunched up into a wild, gravity-defying style. “Now we can get the teludav up and running,” she continued, beaming at the five of them. She stood to meet Coran, peeking into his bag. Hunk, Lance, and Pidge ambled forward, Lance still trailing that godforsaken cow on its halter.

            Keith managed to gather his wits enough to step forward and ask, “Where’s Shiro?” just as the door slid open behind him.

            “What did you do, take a nap?” Allura asked.

            “Not exactly.” Shiro crossed his arms. He was smiling, looking more relaxed than Keith had seen him in ages. Keith felt a momentary breath of calm wash over him. Shiro’s eyes flicked sideways to Lance and he turned his head. “Is… that a _cow_?” he asked, disconcerted.

            “Mm-hmm, his name is Kaltenecker,” Lance grinned proudly. He had a white bandage slapped over the middle of his forehead, which Coran had somehow produced after Lance’s spectacular wipeout on their way out of the mall. Strands of his hair fell across it, contrasting brown on white on brown. The cow mooed in response.

            “So, did you find a way to bond with your lion?” Keith asked Shiro, pulling his attention away.

            “Yes, and we need to get moving,” he answered. His serious face, his commander’s face, was suddenly back, his eyes steely. “We’re headed for the Blade of Marmora’s headquarters.” Keith felt his heart speed up unbearably in the momentary silence that followed.

            “I’ll plot a course!” Coran announced, hurrying for the controls.

            “While you’re doing that, I’m gonna hook up the video game Lance and I bought!” Pidge squealed in excitement. She dashed back over to Lance, setting the box she was clutching on the ground. Lance dropped to his knees beside her.

            “Yeah, let’s get the baby set up!” he said, grabbing one of the controls. His widest, goofiest smile spread across his face. Pidge yanked out a handful of wires.

            “Where can we…” she began, looking around. “How do…” The realization hit her and Lance at the same time as both their faces dropped. “Ahh…” Her eye twitched. “ _Nooooooooooo_!” she howled. She dropped the wires and covered her face. Hunk came over and bent down next to them, picking up the wires.

            “Pidge, don’t you trust me by now?” he asked, shoving her by the shoulder. “I am absolutely certain I can figure out a way to hook this up for you.” Pidge uncovered her face and clutched Hunk’s arm.

            “Hunk, you are an angel,” she said. “An angel, you hear?”

            “What are you going to do about the… cow?” Shiro asked, looking over at it again. Keith saw him start to glance in his direction, turned, and left the room as fast as possible. No, nope, that was not happening. If Lance wanted to adopt a space cow, that was his business, but no way in hell Keith was going to be the one to take care of it. He would hit the training deck for a few hours to try and clear his head before he had to deal with… whatever that knife meant.

            Shiro found him there an hour later. Keith dismissed the training gladiator, dropping into a seat and wiping sweat out of his eyes. Shiro leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, watching him. Keith side-eyed him.

            “That’s your I-want-you-to-talk-about-something face,” he accused. Shiro pressed his lips together, repressing a smile.

            “Well, do you have something to talk about?” he asked. Keith’s hands clenched.

            “Why doesn’t Lance know that the cow is female?” he blurted out. He and Shiro both blinked, equally surprised, before Shiro burst out laughing.

            “That’s a new one for your evasion tactics,” he snickered. “Usually you just stonewall me.” Keith glared at him.

            “I have to work with that idiot. I have to trust him to _have my back_.”

            “And you’re getting much better at that than I thought you might,” Shiro said, amusement still lightening his tone. Keith looked back at his knees. “I’m glad you’re beginning to open up to these people, Keith,” he said, more gently this time. Keith huffed.

            “It’d be easier if Lance didn’t want to try and compete with me every five minutes,” he grumbled.

            “If it makes you feel better, Coran took Kaltenecker down to some kind of… outdoor… simulation– kennel– I don’t know what it is exactly, but they used to keep similar animals down there, apparently.” Keith looked up at Shiro again and quickly pulled his gaze away from those sharp, insightful grey eyes.

            “As long as I don’t have to take care of the stupid thing,” he said.

            “And Hunk managed to hook up Pidge and Lance’s game, so they are happily engaged in that,” he continued. Keith jerked his head.

            “Good. I don’t think I would have wanted to see the aftermath of Pidge being unable to play that game.” They lapsed into silence for a moment. Keith risked a sideways glance at Shiro, who was staring off across the training room. His eyes were slightly glazed over, unseeing. Keith sighed and pushed himself to his feet. “How’s the course to the Blade headquarters coming?” he asked. Shiro looked back over at him, all sharp focus again.

            “Coran said another varga or two and he’d have it. Allura doesn’t want to wormhole straight there in case it’s a trap, so we’re heading to a nearby system and then flying in from there. It’ll take us two or three – I think a quintant is a day.”

            “Three _days_?” Keith despaired. “But I— Don’t we want to talk to these people as soon as possible?” Shiro’s jaw tightened.

            “We do, and I don’t like how much Allura distrusts the Blade when Ulaz sacrificed himself for us, but it’s a good precaution anyway. We want to make absolutely sure Zarkon isn’t still tracking the Black Lion.” Keith glanced up at him curiously.

            “What happened, anyway? You said you bonded, but—”

            “Black showed me… a vision, I guess,” Shiro said quietly. “Alfor and Zarkon built her, together. I didn’t get all the details, but I think she was trying to explain why Zarkon’s hold on her was so strong. And then I ended up on some sort of astral plane and I fought Zarkon—”

            “You _fought_ Zarkon?” Keith yelped, leaping to his feet. “By _yourself_?” Shiro leveled a look at Keith.

            “You’re hardly one to talk,” he said. “But yes. I think Black is connected somehow to this… other plane. She came to help me, and I think she… kicked him out, somehow. Broke the connection. I think I can keep him out – for now, at least.” Keith rubbed a hand across his forehead. His glove was stiff with drying sweat.

            “Did you tell Allura and Coran?” he asked. Shiro shook his head.

            “Not yet. I want to talk to the Blade of Marmora as soon as possible. Then we can deal with… everything else.” Keith folded his arms, shrinking in on himself.

            “Right,” he said. “Everything else.” His knife burned like a brand against his back.

*

            He opened the door and collided with Lance.

            Both of them went sprawling. Keith felt his knee hit wrong and grimaced at the thought of the bruise that would be making his leg stiff for the next few days. He pushed himself up to sitting, the floor sapping heat from his hands. Lance was on his back, groaning and rubbing his elbow.

            “Hey, man, watch where you’re going!” he complained.

            “Why were you standing right outside my door?”

            “I wasn’t.”

            “You _were_.” Lance groaned, covering his face with his hands.

            “Fine, I was. I’ll leave now.” He didn’t move from the floor.

            “Why is everything with you so difficult?” Keith exploded in frustration. Lance took his hands away from his face, sat up, and looked at him incredulously.

            “ _I’m_ the difficult one? I was just going to come see if you wanted to play Killbot with me. You’re the one who walked out and knocked me to the ground.”

            “I thought Pidge was playing with you?” Lance shrugged.

            “She went off to study Altean.”

            “Then ask Hunk.”

            “Asleep. And trust me, waking the sleeping bear is never a good idea.”

            “I don’t know what— I don’t know how to play that game,” Keith said. He was suddenly uncomfortably aware that they hadn’t moved, and were both sitting on the ground in the doorway to Keith’s bedroom. His skin tingled with the cool air of the Castle. His legs felt numb with cold. He struggled to his feet. “I was just headed to the kitchen for some dinner.” Lance tilted his head to look up at him. His head was still bandaged, the white practically fluorescent under the pale castle lights.

            “Suit yourself,” he said, shrugging. He climbed to his feet and started to turn towards his own room when he was interrupted by Allura’s voice over the intercom.

            “Paladins, we need you in the control room.”

            Lance and Keith shared one brief moment of eye contact, before both of them looked away and trudged toward the elevator down to the bridge. Shiro and Pidge met them down there. Hunk stumbled in a few minutes later, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. Allura and Coran were watching a large screen, eyes fixed on the flashing Altean text.

            “We’ve received an urgent distress signal,” Coran said, tapping at one of the screens. “It’s… It’s from a Galra ship.” There was a moment of silence. Keith saw the other Paladins exchanging sideways glances.

            “So… One less Galra ship for us to shoot down, right? I mean, that’s not a problem we have to deal with, right?” Hunk looked nervously between Allura and Coran.

            “Normally, of course you’d be correct,” Coran said. “But there’s something strange about this signal. It’s not following the normal Galra procedures. In fact, it’s not broadcasting on a Galra channel at all.”

            “We think there may be prisoners on the ship attempting to escape,” Allura said. “Unfortunately, their communications system seems to be damaged. There’s no way for us to contact them and find out what’s going on. You’ll have to go into the ship yourselves.” Keith felt himself tensing.

            “Isn’t the Blade of Marmora more important than this?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice even. Allura fixed him with a glare.

            “We’ve talked about this, Keith. Voltron is bound to help _all_ in need.”

            “Yeah, but there are people in need _all across the universe_!” he said. “We can’t be everywhere at once, we can’t save _everyone_. So we need to concentrate on taking the steps we can to save as many people as possible. And right now, that’s going to the Blade of Marmora.”

            “I still do not trust that the Blade is not a trap,” Allura said, her voice dangerously calm. “We are far more likely to do good by rescuing these prisoners than we are by rushing blindly into a nest of Galra.” Keith felt his stomach sink in a way that had started to become familiar every time Allura talked about the Galra. Shiro’s jaw tightened.

            “Princess—” he started.

            “I’m taking us to the ship,” she said firmly, and turned away. Shiro sighed.

            “Alright. Everyone, get to your lions. We’ll hang back and let Pidge use Green to approach undetected. She can scan for life signs and see if there’s any way to ping their communications system. Once she lets us know what the situation is, be prepared to come in hot.”

            “Got it,” the Paladins chorused.

*

            The ship appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be dead in the water. Dull purple light shone from its windows, but its engines were not running. There was no activity from its weapons. It hung silently in open space, its stillness unnerving. Pidge’s scan had indicated only six biosignatures on board. Gaping hangar doors indicated that several smaller pods had left the ship, with one pod still in its bay, but they were nowhere within range of their scanners. Even the closest asteroid was lightyears away. The ship’s communications were still down.

            “Lance, Keith, you guys get inside, do a sweep and see if you can find whoever’s been left on board. Pidge, Hunk, the two of you head to the ship’s control room and see if you can determine what happened and why. I’ll stay out here in Black just in case there are any fighters our scanners haven’t picked up.”

            “On it,” Pidge said.

            “Roger that!” Lance mock saluted over their video comm. Black pulled upward, circling above the ship, while the four other lions flew in close. Keith and Lance pulled Red and Blue up next to the open hangar doors, both of them sliding out of their lions’ mouths. They powered up their jetpacks to push them over through the open hangars, which sealed back up behind them. They dropped to the floor and opened their helmets. Lance pulled up a holoscreen with Pidge’s scan of the ship.

            “Looks like the biosignatures are in two groups — there’s four of them in the rear of the ship, and two down in the engine room. Start with the bigger group?” Lance asked. Keith jerked his head in a nod.

            The two of them moved as silently as possible through the empty ship. Keith forced his breath to stay even as they turned corner after corner without seeing so much as a security drone. Hunk and Pidge reached the control room – equally empty, although they reported a dead Galra officer on the floor – and determined that somehow just about all of the ship’s electrical systems had short-circuited. The lights and airlocks and life support system were running on emergency backups, but it wasn’t designed to last long.

            “This place is spooooooookyyyyyyyy,” Lance said. Keith glanced back at him and he waggled his fingers. “Ooooooooooh, ghost ship.” His laugh was barely suppressed by a mockery of a ghost voice. Keith groaned, continuing forward. Lance jogged up alongside him. “Aw, c’mon, man, I’m not _that_ terrible.”

            “Yes you are,” Keith said without looking at him. Lance stuck his lip out in a pout.

            “You just have no sense of humor,” he sniffed.

            “Would you be quiet?” Keith snapped. “We’re getting close.”

            Lance rolled his eyes, but fell quiet as they drew up to the door. He and Keith both drew their bayards, exchanging a moment of eye contact, ready for whatever lay beyond the door. Keith slashed the door open with his sword. Behind it were four startled Galra soldiers.

            There was a single breathless moment before one of them started to raise his blaster. Lance shot him dead center. He crumpled, and hadn’t even hit the floor before Keith was dashing in, slashing at a second one with his sword. The third managed to get his blaster up and start shooting, but Lance was ready with his shield. Keith rushed at him from behind. The Galra spotted him just in time to get off a shot towards him. It grazed his left elbow, and he felt a burst of heat and pain as it tore through the suit, but his momentum carried him forward and he slashed the Galra’s throat. The fourth soldier had immediately scrambled for an exit, making it to an elevator. He pried the door apart with his claws and leapt straight into the shaft. Lance’s shot missed him by a second, scorching the wall behind him.

            “Shit,” he muttered. “Three Galra soldiers down, one leaping down an elevator shaft,” he reported into the comms. “Keith, you okay?”

            “Fine,” he muttered. He edged up to the shattered door and stared down the shaft, lit in the same dim purple as the rest of the Galra ship, although marginally darker. He squinted, and caught a glimpse of yellow eyes looking back up at him before they disappeared through a door further down. He pulled up Pidge’s scan again and watched one of the little red dots scurrying along the corridors of the ship.

            “Looks like he’s heading for the control room, Pidge, Hunk,” Keith reported.

            “We’ll get him,” Hunk said. “Not having any luck fixing the systems—”

            An explosion burst outside the ship, accompanied by a sudden burst of shouting from Shiro, Allura, and Coran. Lance raised a hand to his helmet, pressing it against his head, as if that would somehow help him hear clearly enough to understand what had just happened.

            “Guys? What’s going on? Are you alright?”

            “Another Galra ship has appeared,” Allura said, the strain evident in her voice. “We’re taking heavy fire!”

            “Lance, Keith, get back to your lions now! We need you out here!” Shiro’s voice was measured, but there was a sharp tone of command in it.

            “We’re on our way,” Keith said. He and Lance took off running, letting their bayards retract onto their belts. They had almost made it back to the empty bays where they had left their lions when Hunk’s panicked voice came over the comm.

            “Hey, uh, guys? That Galra that escaped did not come to the control room. He’s actually— it looks like he’s crawled down into one of the canon maintenance shafts—”

            “He’s trying to operate the ship’s weapons manually!” Pidge broke in. “There’s nothing I can do to stop him from the control room—”

            “I’m on it,” Keith said, turning back the way he came. Lance started to follow him and Keith put up a hand. “No, you get to your lion and go help Shiro. I’ll be out as fast as I can.”

            “Keith, no, I don’t think we should—”

            Whatever Lance was shouting after him, as well as his muttered comments in the comms, were lost on Keith as he sprinted back down the corridor. He pulled up the holoscreen on his suit’s personal computer and tried to calculate the fastest route down to the maintenance shafts from Pidge’s scan, but it was impossible to figure out while running. He shut the screen off and ran back the way he and Lance had gone, following the Galra’s lead and leaping into the elevator shaft. It was a long run down another three or four corridors, following the pried-open doors, before he reached a grate that had been torn off a wall, exposing an imposingly empty drop into darkness. The place was clearly designed for service drones, not people – he was surprised the Galra had even fit. Still, there were ladder rungs running down the inside of the shaft. Unsheathing his bayard, he climbed in cautiously, trying to descend using only one hand.

            His eyes adjusted to the dark in time to see the Galra just a few rungs below him, with a section of the shaft wall open to reveal a mess of wires and what looked like tiny Balmera crystals powering it all. He was fiddling with it frantically, unceremoniously yanking at tangles of wire with his claws. There was no room to use his bayard, no way to reach him at a remotely useful angle. Keith took a deep breath, let go of the ladder, and jumped.

            The Galra shrieked, breathy and high-pitched, as Keith collided with him. Both of them plummeted through the darkness, limbs catching painfully on the ladder rungs. The Galra flailed, his arms trapped against his torso by Keith’s legs. His head smashed against the side of the wall and Keith felt him go limp. He gave a burst of power to his jetpack, reversing his fall, and snatched at the ladder. He managed to grab hold of it, although his ribs protested as his body slammed towards the wall against the protruding rungs. The Galra soldier continued to fall, crashing down to the bottom of the maintenance shaft where he lay motionless, his neck at an unnatural angle. Keith breathed a sigh of relief, letting his bayard retract, when suddenly a slight blue gleam caught his eye.

            He felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. He dimly registered the continued sound of the team chattering over the comms, and the faint sound of explosions, but he ignored it all as he half-climbed, half fell the rest of the way down the shaft. His fingers trembling, he reached down to pull the knife out of the dead Galra’s boot. A blade entirely too similar to his own sat heavy in his hands, glowing with the symbol of the Blade of Marmora.

            “Keith! Lance! Where are you? I need you out here!” Shiro shouted. Keith jerked back into reality, swallowing his terror. There was no time, not right now. He heard another muffled explosion from outside the ship.

            “I went after one of the Galra. Lance, I told you to get to Blue, what are you doing?” he demanded.

            There was no reply.

            “Lance?” he said again. “Lance, _where the hell are you_?”

            Silence still, and this time Pidge and Hunk and all the rest of them had fallen quiet to try and hear an answer.

            “Lance?” came Hunk’s tentative voice. “Buddy?”

            “Lance, are you there?” Allura asked.

            Something hot and awful was curled in the bottom of Keith’s gut. It felt like it was boiling him alive from the inside out, melting away his bones and skin until they were nothing but a nauseating, goopy mess. He wanted to be sick, he wanted to blink and realize this was a bad dream, he wanted the walls to collapse in on him and for this to _not be real_.

            He swallowed. The knife slipped out of his grasp, landing on the dead Galra’s stomach. “I’ll find him,” he said. He didn’t bother with the ladder, he just used his jetpack to shoot back up to the top of the maintenance shaft as fast as possible, and then did the same in the elevator. It wasn’t nearly fast enough.

            Pidge and Hunk had left the control room and gotten back to their own lions. There were several more muffled explosions from outside. Keith ran as fast as he could back along the corridors to the hangar where he had left Lance. His entire body pounded with his heartbeat, too fast and heavy. He felt like he might come apart at the seams. A dozen worst case scenarios whispered to the edge of his brain. He was so lost in his terror that he almost tripped over Lance’s helmet, lying abandoned on the floor. There was a dead Galra officer on the ground, shot clean through the head, evidently one of the two biosignatures that had been in the engine room. The last pod that had still been in its hangar was gone.

            “Keith, did you find Lance?” Hunk was asking anxiously. The world moved in bullet time. It took an agonizingly long moment for Keith to bend and pick up Lance’s helmet.

            “Keith, are you there?” Shiro asked, and that was probably the only reason Keith managed to answer at all, because it was Shiro, and because he had to say _something_ , because Shiro could help, Keith trusted that Shiro could fix this, whatever had happened, because Shiro was the only one who had ever managed to fix anything in his mess of a life so he had to be able to fix this.

            “He’s— I— Helmet. I found his helmet,” Keith said. His mouth felt numb. “He’s—” He forgot the word ‘gone.’ There was no such thing. Lance could not just be _gone_. Wounded, unconscious, Keith was ready for that. He was not ready for just _gone_. An explosion so big it rocked the ship made Keith stumble.

            “Whatever happened, we can’t deal with it right this second,” Shiro decided. “Keith, get to Red. We need you out here.”

            “But—”

            “ _Now_.”

            “But I have to find Lance,” Keith objected. “I— He’s—” His brain was short-circuiting. Too many things had gone wrong, too fast. Lance’s helmet felt almost too heavy for him to lift.

            “We’ll find Lance, but we can’t do that if these Galra blow us to pieces,” Shiro said. “ _Hurry_!”

            “No!” Keith shouted, and with anger came a kind of clarity. “No, I left him— I have to find him—”

            “Keith, get to your lion _now_ ,” Princess Allura ordered. “The rest of your team needs you.”

            “I—” Keith was interrupted by a shriek from Hunk as he caught the edge of an ion blast. Keith felt himself trembling from head to toe, but with a furious curse he launched himself at the open hangar and leaped forward into Red, still clutching Lance’s helmet.

*

            Alarms were blaring in the Castle when Keith tumbled out of his lion almost before she’d completely landed. He ignored the hangar door gaping open and the freezing air that ripped at his back as he tucked the blue helmet under his arm and sprinted to the elevator out of the hangar. The control room was a maelstrom of blinking lights. Coran was bouncing from one panel to another while Allura stood clutching the master controls, tense and still, the eye of the storm. Curls of white hair escaped her bun, dropping down her neck and beside her jaw. One was smeared in wisps and frizz across her forehead, stuck there with sweat.

            “Where is he?” Keith demanded. Coran slammed the heel of his hand against a pulsing button and the shrillest of the alarms cut out.

            “The particle barrier is shot to bits but at least those new teludav lenses are ready to go,” he said. Allura nodded mutely, fingers digging into the controls.

            “WHERE IS HE? _Where’s Lance_?” Keith found himself in front of Allura with no memory of crossing the room, his hand wrapped around her arm so tight his knuckles went white. Her eyes met his, fractured and multi-hued blue reflecting the flashes of alarms and explosions, set with fatigue and concern.

            “I don’t know,” she said. Keith’s grip on her arm grew tight enough to leave bruises.

            “How can you _not know_?” he shouted. She ripped her arm away, his fingers left hanging claw-like in the air.

            “I don’t have a tracker embedded in his arm, Keith!” she snapped. “There was a transport pod that deployed around the time we lost contact with him, but it went through a wormhole before we could stop it. It could be on the other side of the universe by now.” Keith’s entire body felt taut as a wire, ready to lash violently out against anyone who touched him. Adrenaline pounded painfully through his veins. He could barely stand still, every cell in his body quivering with the need to _move_ , to do something, anything.

            “So how do we find it?” he asked. Even his voice sounded stretched and tight.

            “We can’t,” Allura said. “It’s gone.”

            “Then where’s Blue? Has she gone after him yet?” The look Allura gave him made him feel infinitely small. Her pity shrank him back to a near forgotten childhood, getting a first glimpse of how much bigger and crueler the world was than he had been able to imagine. When she spoke, the jagged edges of her words had softened.

            “Not everyone’s bond with their lion is as strong as yours, Keith.” He shook his head.

            “No. Lance and Blue are… He loves that lion more than anything. She has to be able to find him.” Even to his own ears his words sounded naïve.

            “That’s a nasty cut across your arm,” she said, turning back to a demanding holoscreen. “You should spend half a varga in a healing pod. Coran and I are doing everything we can.”

            “I’m fine,” he muttered. He pushed past Coran, storming back down to the hangars in time to see Yellow carrying an inert Blue into the hangar in his mouth. Yellow set her down gently, leaving her standing lifelessly in the center, while he squeezed in beside her. Hunk clambered down from his lion to join Keith in front of Blue. “Why isn’t she going after him?” he asked, staring disbelievingly at Blue’s impassive face.

            “I don’t know,” Hunk said, his voice breathless and stuttering with nervous speed. “Maybe, maybe she can’t? Maybe he’s too far away? I don’t know, man, we still don’t understand anything about these things, who knows what’s going on in their heads. Do they even think in their heads?”

            Keith heard Shiro and Pidge enter behind them but paid them no mind. He waved, as if that would help get Blue’s attention. “Hey!” he shouted. “Your Paladin is in trouble! Why aren’t you going after him?” Unsurprisingly, she remained motionless. Keith’s arm dropped, his hand balling into a fist at his side. He felt Shiro’s hand press into his shoulder.

            “We’ll find him,” he said. “Meanwhile, you should get that cut looked after.” Keith shook him off.

            “I told Allura, I’m _fine_.” He pushed past the other three Paladins and blew out of the hangar. He found himself standing in his room before he knew where he was going, all his anger and frustration abruptly drained, leaving him with nothing but pale exhaustion and a slight tremble betraying the feeling that he was about to vomit. He sank slowly into sitting on his bed, and only then did he realize he was still clutching Lance’s helmet. He pulled his own helmet off, set it aside, and took Lance’s between his hands. His hair, freed from its confines, fell forward into his eyes. Through the strands he could see his dim and warped reflection in the visor. He closed his eyes and lifted the helmet to press against his forehead. Sweat painted a slick coating against the smooth outside.

            “I’m sorry Lance,” he whispered. “I’ll find you. I promise.” Blood trickled out of the cut on his arm, sliding hot and sticky down his skin.

*

            Time is broken in space. Without a constant star and a slowly spinning planet, with gravity warping and pulling at the space around them, time cracked and shattered into something abstract and meaningless. It seemed to pull at the edges, to grow and shrink with frustration and exhaustion and rushes of adrenaline that left hands trembling with desperate energy unsupported by food or sleep. Day and night stretched and scraped and clawed at each other’s edges until they overlapped, and then blurred, and the blurriness crept from the edges further and further in until 9:00 was indistinguishable from 4 and it continued on, towards the center, until day and night sank completely into one another. Hunk’s internal clock held him tightly to his Earth circadian rhythm – eight hours sleeping, sixteen hours waking – but he would be making himself lunch when Shiro would wander in for a midnight glass of water, awoken by his nightmares. Pidge lost all sense of division between day and night, sleeping and waking, and rarely retreated to her room. They would find her curled up, cat-like, in the most unlikely places, tucked into hidden nooks and crannies, catching shallow gasps of sleep. Allura worked herself to the point of exhaustion, until Coran sternly ushered her, drained and barely upright, to bed. She would then sleep for hours on end, depleted quintessence slowly trickling back to strength. Coran himself slept even less often than she did, only retreating to bed when his princess was safely asleep and always rising hours before her, whistling his way down to the mechanical chambers of the castle scrawled with glowing Altean symbols that baffled even Pidge into a standstill.

            Lance had always been like Hunk, committed to a 24-hour cycle by his beauty sleep and skin routine, except for the odd night when he was, inexplicably, found in some hallway or empty room, quick to flash a smile and a quip as soon as he knew he wasn’t alone.

            As for Keith, he would forget sleep until he would find standing up made him dizzy, and Shiro would drop a hand on his shoulder, giving him a silent look that Keith knew was a reminder to take care of himself. Then he would wander to his bed, but even as his muscles melted with relief into the sheets, puddling in fatigue, he’d find himself staring blankly at the ceiling, forgetting how to fall asleep.

            It was while he was floating, heavy and numb, suspended in the disjointed thoughts that slid dream-like through his head, that he heard the noise, low and loud and angry. His eyes pulled open and he blinked and squinted, disoriented in the dark. The noise came again, a moan that he felt rumble at the base of his skull. A frown creased his eyebrows. Possibilities trickled through his brain – something mechanical, someone hurt, Hunk with a bad stomach bug because he tried some freaky alien food. Then the noise came again, and with it a flash of memory so clear he ought to kick himself for not recognizing the sound sooner.

            The cow. The fucking cow. What had Lance named it? Kaltenecker.

            He pulled himself out of the sheets, a slight tremble of exhaustion settling into stillness in his heavy limbs. His mouth tasted like sticky morning breath. A yawn stretched his jaw, pressure pushing against his eyes and forehead, urging him back to sleep. He squeezed his eyes shut, wondering if he might be able to actually sleep if he lay back down right now. Kaltenecker lowed angrily from somewhere down below. Keith pushed the bangs tickling his eyebrows out of the way. He pushed himself laboriously to his feet and wandered blearily out of his room, following a noise he’d thought he was done with at the age of six.

            He found her splattered in food goo. A broken hose on the wall dripped slowly, clumps of green sliding to the ground with nauseating splats. He entered the room cautiously, afraid she might kick him if he startled her. “Easy, girl, easy,” he murmured, keeping his voice soft. “I just want to help.” She lowed at him in irritation, her tail flicking back and forth. He edged his way along the wall to the food hose, trying to keep his movements slow and even. He stifled a yawn, his jaw creaking in protest.

            Whatever Altean beast this bay was originally meant for had evidently been trained to eat from the food hose. Kaltenecker, it seemed, had attempted to bite off the top of it, leaving a gaping hole that had sprayed everywhere. A trough that had once contained water was mostly empty. Clumps of goo were half dissolved into the pitiful inch of water across the bottom. Keith glared at the cow.

            “I didn’t go to the Garrison to end up running a farm again,” he told her. Kaltenecker mooed at him. “Yeah, I guess you’re about as happy about this as I am.” He edged back along the wall to the door. “I’ll be back in a minute. I need a few things.”

            He lost all sense of time, hazy with exhaustion, his muscles hot and torn, but sometime later he stepped back, wiping sweat from his forehead, and allowed himself a small smile. He’d moved Kaltenecker into the next bay over – the castle cleaning bots could deal with the original one, no reason for _him_ to spend a varga wiping food goo off the floor – and dragged in a second trough to fill with food goo. He’d get Hunk or Pidge to program it to refill the trough at periodic intervals, and to increase how often the water trough would fill. He’d also calmed Kaltenecker down enough to get in close and wipe all the food goo off of her. She was lying down now, clean, well-fed, well-watered, and surprisingly happy. Keith slid down the wall opposite her, one leg bent, his arm flung across his knee. He leaned his head back against the wall, looking at Kaltenecker through half-lidded eyes.

            “You’re proof I’m never going to understand that— that— God. Lance is a nightmare,” he muttered. “Who just adopts a cow, no questions asked? He probably didn’t have the first clue how he was supposed to take care of you.” He yawned, his cheeks stretching. “If I had any say, we’d cut you up for hamburgers,” he said through the yawn. “But don’t worry. Lance would never allow that. He _adopts_ things – people, aliens, whatever. If he can befriend it, he decides to protect it. He threw himself in front of a grenade for Coran when we’d only known him for like four days.” He yawned again, blinking slowly. “I’m gonna find him.” Even to his own ears, his words sounded slurred with sleepiness. “I’m gonna bring him… home…”

            It was Coran who found him, who knew how many vargas later, slumped against the wall asleep. Keith awoke to the gentle shake of his shoulder, blinking in confusion, his vision obscured by a blur of orange. Coran was smiling kindly, saying something about “A love for animals is all very well but you’ll get better rest in your own bed” before tacking on a simile in Altean gibberish. Keith let him help him to his feet and escort him stumbling back to his room. At Coran’s prompting, he slipped into the bathroom, peeling off clothes stained with sweat and food goo. He left them where they dropped onto the floor. The hot water of the shower soaked into his muscles, leaving him relaxed and fighting to keep his eyes open. He drifted on the edge of consciousness, not sure how long he just stood under the shower, letting the water run across his skin. When he got out, he rubbed a towel across his body in a perfunctory manner and slipped into a t-shirt and boxers, ignoring his still-damp skin and dripping wet hair. Coran was gone when he stepped out, but his room was dim, with only a bedside light on. He swiped at it as he dropped against his sheets. He was asleep by the time his head hit the pillow.

*

            “We need to go to the Blade.”

            “ _No_.”

            “Princess—”

            “Not until we find Lance!” Keith jumped as Hunk spoke up thunderously from behind him. He and Pidge had been largely silent for the past hour, Pidge’s eyes skipping over the Castle’s scanners for any clue to Lance’s whereabouts, Hunk just watching Shiro and Allura’s argument like a tennis match. Now he stood, abruptly, his face set hard like Keith had never seen. “It’s been almost a week, and I don’t want to even think about all the trouble Lance could get into in that time. He didn’t just vanish into a vacuum, so wherever he is, he’s probably counting on us to find him, and we’re just sitting pretty doing _nothing_.” Allura glared at Hunk. Her bun pulled her hair away from her face, sharpening its definition and revealing the warrior she was.

            “You know full well that is not true,” Allura said. Her words had sharp edges like broken metal. “But there is only so much we can do. That pod jumped through a wormhole. Wormholes are untraceable. They open to any and all places in the universe. Lance could quite literally be _anywhere_.”

            “Convenient,” Keith snorted. Allura cast him a quick withering look. “I thought Alteans were the only ones who had wormhole technology?” She threw up her hands in disgust.

            “Ten thousand years ago that was the case, but I’ve hardly kept up to date on the latest technology while in cryosleep.”

            “All the more reason,” Shiro interrupted, “to go to the Blade. Look, Princess, I know you don’t trust them yet. But if they aren’t evil – and I’m evidence they’re not – then they know more about the Empire and Zarkon than anyone on this ship possibly could. And if they have more people like Ulaz, working on the inside of Galra ships, they might even know where Lance is. At the very least, they could be our eyes and ears across the universe.” Allura crossed her arms.

            “I was against going to the Blade _before_. Now we cannot even form Voltron if things go awry. We are missing a Paladin.”

            “Which is why we need to concentrate on finding him first!” Hunk interjected.

            Keith stepped back, next to Pidge. This was the third time they’d had this argument, although the first time Hunk had jumped in. It would go around and around in circles until everyone was too tired to continue, and their only conclusion would be “Let’s wait and see.” He glanced over at Pidge’s computer screen.

            “Anything useful?” he asked quietly. She shook her head, glasses gleaming.

            “Nothing. As far as I can tell, he just— vanished.”

            “People don’t just _vanish_. They have to go _somewhere_ ,” Keith snapped. Pidge shot him a single piercing look before turning back to her computer. He stepped away, and after a moment of hesitation, turned and left the room. He never did well in arguments, and he never did well when he got emotional. And he was more emotional over anything involving Lance than he would have liked to admit.

            Keith didn’t understand what he had done to spike Lance’s animosity back at the Garrison. Truth be told, he hardly _remembered_ Lance back at the Garrison. Keith got the strong impression he had been the well-liked class clown, the guy who could launch spitballs at teachers without ever getting in serious trouble for it. Unfortunately, perhaps, for Lance, that wasn’t how the Garrison operated. Keith’s only sharp memory of him involved him getting chewed out mercilessly for crashing the simulator. He knew, thinking back, that Lance had _been_ there – sitting next to Hunk in classes, going over notecards in the cafeteria, and, now that he thought about it, giving him death glares every time his name appeared at the top of the class – but he hadn’t really registered him. Not anymore than the other students. And Keith had a habit of keeping everyone around him at arm’s length. Faces blurred together. He didn’t bother to remember which was which.

            It was different now, of course. There were only four other human faces around him, and thanks to Voltron, they’d all been swimming in each other’s heads. They didn’t garner specific, concrete thoughts from one another that way, but they left impressions like fingerprints on each other’s minds. Lance’s was swirling, constant motion, like the sea in more ways than one. The top was light, playful, dashing from thought to thought, but underneath a storm sat heavy and turbulent. Keith dwelled on the lingering ghosts of Lance’s thoughts more than he should – enough to hope Lance never found out about it.

            His feet paused beneath him, and he looked up, and froze. What had possessed him to wander over to _Lance’s room_ , of all places, he did not want to think about. He turned instantly, practically tripping over his own feet in an effort to run away. He had to get away from the smooth metal door that was not going to open, had to scrub the image of Lance opening it, yawning and stretching, wearing those absurd blue lion slippers, out of his mind. He had to stay away from this door where he absolutely had _no right to be_ …

            He was bracing himself against the wall with one hand, breathing hard through his nose. His fingers curled against the chill of the Castle wall, nails scraping against it. He glanced back at Lance’s room.

            There was, at most, one other Galra in that pod with Lance. He could overpower _one_ Galra. He had to be able to. He did not train with Keith or Shiro’s intensity, but he wasn’t a slacker. Keith was already discovering, much to his chagrin, that he was reliable in a fight and took the time to see solutions Keith would have missed by charging in full steam ahead. There was no way one lonely Galra had taken their Blue Paladin down. Keith refused to believe it. He would not lose someone else to Galra captivity.

            However, if Lance was not a prisoner, he was still left to pilot an unfamiliar and possibly damaged transport pod, after popping out of a wormhole into probably hostile territory. He could have crashed anywhere, and might have no way to get a signal to them. So it was up to them to find one lonely, lost human in all the universe. And that was an image that left Keith shuddering.

            His steps back towards Lance’s room were painful and unwilling. He had to drag his feet along, as if moving through molasses. When he finally reached it, it seemed to take an eternity to touch his hand to the door pad and signal it to open. As soon as it shut behind him, however, time sped back up. He froze, again. He should not be in here. This was not his space. This was not allowed.

            But he didn’t know how else to reach out to Lance. Blue was unresponsive. Red did not seem to understand what she wanted him to do, when he tried to get her to help search. Pidge was finding nothing. Allura was finding nothing. All of them were talking in circles about going to the Blade or not. All of Hunk’s engineering skills could not build a scanner big enough to find one tiny person in all the vastness of space. Keith had nothing to contribute, no skills in radar or tracking. His reasons for wanting to go to the Blade were so tangled that he didn’t trust himself to voice an opinion – and in any case, the knife and everything it represented had taken a backseat the moment he’d found Lance’s abandoned helmet.

            Lance had left his headphones on the table next to the bed. They were a compactible type, easy to fold up and stick in a pocket. He must have had them with him when they found Blue four months ago. Keith sat down on the bed, picking up the headphones absentmindedly, twisting them and turning them over in his hands. Without allowing himself to think too much about what he was doing, he gently settled them over his head, and tapped play.

            Cello music started, long and resonant notes startling Keith with their solemnity. He had always imagined Lance as a pop songs kind of guy. He’d been waiting for something obscenely upbeat and cheery. This was calm, surprisingly gentle and slow. He leaned back against the wall. His eyes slowly drifted closed to the sound of the cello.

            He awoke with a start, how much later he didn’t know, but the room had gone dark. He was curled up into a ball on top of Lance’s covers, the headphones askew. He carefully pulled them off and placed them back on the table. Then he slid off the bed and tried to straighten the mussed sheets as much as possible. He tiptoed out of the room, thanking every lucky star in the sky that his room was right next door, and no one saw him.

*

            They went back to Olkarion at the end of the second week. Pidge had six dozen ideas for how to search for the signal on Lance’s suit, or his bayard, and set up beams to pick up signals across the universe and listen to anything Lance might try to send them, but it would have taken her and Hunk months to build the technology themselves. Allura piloted them down to a city wrapped in scaffolds, rebuilding itself. Pidge practically bounced out the door the second the Castle landed. Hunk, Allura, and Coran were hot on her heels. Keith stayed behind.

            He wanted to help. Every second he spent moping about the Castle instead of looking for Lance ate away at his insides like a tapeworm. But he wasn’t good at this. He came in blaze of glory style, a whirling fury of fire and swords, and went straight for his target. He was the fighter, the pilot, the brute force one. It was what had gotten him kicked out of the Garrison. He couldn’t just sit still when Shiro was missing— not dead, missing, because he’d felt in his gut that Shiro had to be alive. He hadn’t believed for a second that Shiro would make a “pilot error” that got his entire team killed. He had _known_ the Garrison was lying. Or perhaps the alternative was simply so unbearable that he convinced himself it couldn’t be true.

            Returning to his father’s old shack in the desert hadn’t exactly been the most rewarding experience, but at least it had been action of a kind. Blue’s faint signal had been little enough guidance, but it had reassured him that he was onto something real – even if that “something” would have sounded like crazy talk to anyone else who listened. He’d survived on gut feelings for a year. He had chewed two dozen pens until they ran out of ink, writing and discarding and rewriting and crossing it all out to start over again. He was only able to endure the frustration because he was moving towards some kind of goal. If he could have helped Pidge build a signal that could ping Lance’s suit across three different galaxies at once, he would have done that. However, unlike in the desert, where he was alone, there were better options. Between her, Hunk, Coran, and the Olkari, the only thing he could possibly have done would be get in the way. He couldn’t think in numbers fast enough to be useful. The only thing he could do was sit and wait to be pointed towards a problem that could be solved with violence or fancy flying. Those were his contributions.

            He knew the walls of the training room far too well at this point. He was beginning to see them behind his eyes when he tried to fall asleep. He slashed at the training gladiator with mechanical indifference. He forced himself to focus on his technique. He switched his bayard from hand to hand, let the gladiator get in too close to see if he could escape in time and got a staff to the chest because of it. Shiro found him on the ground, huffing in frustration and struggling against the bruises blooming on his ribs. He helped him back to his feet.

            “How come you’re in here?” he asked. Keith shot him a dirty look under his bangs.

            “Where am I supposed to be?”

            “Maybe with the rest of your team.” Keith retracted his bayard to his waist and crossed his arms, glaring at Shiro.

            “I’m no help with the tech stuff they’re doing. The second we have somewhere to look for Lance, I’ll be in Red flying there. But I don’t understand half of what Pidge says on the best of days. Why aren’t _you_ with them?”

            “I stayed back to check on you,” he said. “We don’t want anyone else disappearing on us.” Keith flinched with his whole body. “Sorry, Keith,” Shiro said, his tone softening.

            “It’s my fault,” Keith said dully. “I left him behind. I should’ve—” Shiro’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

            “Blaming yourself doesn’t help any of us,” he said. “It’ll be okay. We’re going to find him.”

            “Allura said he could be _anywhere_. It’s hard enough to find someone who’s disappeared on just one planet. How are we supposed to look for someone who could be anywhere in the universe?” Shiro sighed and squeezed his shoulder.

            “We start with the places he’s most likely to be. Galra command ships, prisons, supply lines that transport pod might have been going to. And then we work our way out from there.” He let go of Keith and crossed his arms. “But in the meantime, we all need to keep it together. The universe still needs us, even if we can’t form Voltron at the moment. We can’t just drop all of our other responsibilities.” Keith looked up at him sharply.

            “But our priority still has to be finding Lance,” he said. “Shiro, we can’t just stop looking for him.” Shiro put up his hand in surrender.

            “I’m not suggesting that,” he said. “But we’ve been hearing and ignoring distress signals and reports of Galra attacks for the past two weeks. We can’t just abandon being Voltron—”

            “We _aren’t Voltron right now_!” Keith realized he was trembling, gone taut as a wire again, his hands clenched at his sides. “We’re missing a Paladin! Shiro, you can’t— We can’t abandon _Lance_.”

            “Keith, calm down, please. We’ll still be looking for Lance, I promise. But there’s only so much we can do. With the tech Pidge and Hunk are setting up with the Olkari, our best bet will be to wait—”

            “I’m _tired_ of waiting!” Keith felt feral, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl as he screamed at Shiro. “Are we going to start seeing candidates for a new Blue Paladin too? Are we just replacing Lance wholesale? Have to be able to form Voltron, right?” He broke off, breathing heavily. It had been years since he’d yelled at Shiro, and his taken-aback expression sent a twinge of guilt through Keith’s gut. Still, it was smothered by his rage. “You’re a good leader, Shiro. And I know we haven’t been able to look for Matt and Pidge’s dad. But Lance is different! Lance is—” He bit off his own words, uncertain what he’d been about to say. He took a deep breath and tried to start over calmer. “Lance is a Paladin. If we can just get close _enough_ , Blue should go to him, right? And he has his suit, and his bayard, and he knows to try and find us or get a signal to us. It’s not the same as Matt or Commander Holt.”

            Shiro’s eyes reflected the same kind of pity that Allura had had in her eyes right after Lance vanished. It made Keith shrink back and taste bile on his tongue. He might be the sword edge, the brute force, the animal instinct of the team, but he was not a child. He was straightforward, not stupid, and the look in Shiro’s eyes made him feel like nothing but a naïve little boy lost in space.

            “Look,” he said, his voice full of studied compassion. “Finding Lance is still the most important thing. We’re just going to try and help out some other folks along the way as well. It’ll probably help us all get our heads back on straight. But we need you to be there, okay? You can’t hang back in the Castle and get obsessive.” Keith looked at Shiro for a long few seconds. Finally, though, he decided he didn’t have an answer. He just left, brushing past Shiro on his way out.

            At least Shiro knew enough not to chase him.

*

            He couldn’t sleep.

            This wasn’t exactly a new development. He wasn’t an easy sleeper to begin with – the nightmares had probably begun when his dad left, gotten worse after Shiro disappeared, lessened with his return, and then come back full force after getting a look at Ulaz’s sword. After Lance disappeared, they’d gotten worse than they had ever been before.

            Tonight, though, was a particular kind of awful. The echo of the static silence over the comms, betraying Lance’s sudden absence, roared in his ears. He’d gone back to the gladiator eventually and worked himself almost to collapse in training simulations. He’d only left after Shiro had come back to check on him and firmly ordered him to bed. There, Keith lay in the screaming silence, tossing and turning with a kind of desperation. The guilt and the anger and everything else had dissipated. Now, he was just _tired_. He’d give anything to block out the world and just be able to sleep.

            Unable to lay still a moment longer, he pushed back his sheet and climbed out of bed. He wandered to the door and hesitated a long moment before he touched the pad to open it. It slid open with a quiet hiss of air, and he breathed a sigh of relief at the dark and empty hallway. He tiptoed, refusing to admit to himself what he was planning until he was actually standing in front of Lance’s door. He cast one last look down the hall before he stepped forward. The door opened, he stepped inside, and a moment later the door slid closed behind him and left him in dark.

            He didn’t turn on a light. He didn’t want to see what this room looked like, beginning to gather dust, sitting empty in the middle of Castle. He inched his way across the room hesitantly, fumbling for the headphones where he’d left them on the bedside table. He slid them over his ears and awkwardly tapped one side, bringing up a menu. He scrolled through the holoscreen full of artists and albums he didn’t recognize before giving up and selecting one at random. A woman crooned Spanish in his ear.

            He lay down curled up on top of Lance’s covers, breathing deeply and trying to concentrate on the sound of the music. He frowned and shifted. Something was uneven beneath the covers. His fingers peeled back the sheet and found Lance’s jacket, crumpled and buried. His breath caught. He cast a pointless glance around the dark room, and then he pulled the jacket loose, drew it close, and hugged it, breathing in Lance’s scent. Then, finally, he managed to sleep.

*

            It became a habit, and then it became a necessity. Lying by himself in his own room left him with endless, horrifying silence: the silence of the Garrison officers as he raged and screamed for Shiro, the silence of the maintenance shaft after the Galra hit the bottom, the silence on the comms when Lance failed to answer their call. He was so fucking tired of being left alone.

            The whole situation was hilariously ironic. Or at least, it would have been, had Keith been able to find any humor at all in Lance’s continued absence. That it would be _Lance_ , of all people, who would vanish, was a cruel joke from the universe. Lance had stuck to Keith like a burr since the moment they both pulled Shiro off the table. Keith had never wished him _gone_ , precisely, but he’d lost count of the times he’d wished Lance would leave him in peace for five minutes. Always jabbering over the comms, always pestering Keith when he retreated to his room or the training deck, always needling him about their supposed rivalry: that was Keith’s exasperated impression of the Blue Paladin. The more they tried to avoid each other, the more they seemed to run into each other headfirst. Now here he was, thinking he’d give his right arm to hear Lance’s voice again.

            He suspected, in a distant sort of way, that the root of his feelings lay somewhere he’d never explored or acknowledged. He’d known for a while that the way his eyes caught on Lance and lingered – on the slope of his shoulder, on a sweat-slicked tuft of his hair, on his finger steady and sure on the trigger of his bayard – was not precisely normal. Trapped in an elevator shaft with their bare backs pressed hot against each other, it had been an uphill argument with himself to insist that his bursts of heavy breath came from physical exertion and irritation. The problem was, it was so wildly illogical. He couldn’t _desire_ Lance. They were grudging teammates at best and bitter rivals at worst. It was pointless to boot— Lance “I will flirt with anything even vaguely female” Sanchez was hardly likely to reciprocate. In spite of all that, though, he was still here, lying on _Lance’s_ bed, only able to sleep with _Lance’s_ music, with his face buried in _Lance’s_ jacket. He knew _exactly_ what it looked like. The only reason he could continue to look the other Paladins in the eye was making sure none of them ever found out.

            They ran missions, while they waited for a signal or a clue. They freed a planet called Vellorum from the Empire. They attacked a Galra flagship, accidentally alerting Zarkon to their whereabouts. Pidge tried to hack their systems to see if they had any information about where Lance might be, but a Robeast arrived and they had to fight their way out. With only four lions and unable to form Voltron, they survived by the skin of their teeth. All the information Pidge had managed to pull from the ship was either useless or garbled beyond recognition. There was no mention of the Blue Paladin anywhere. Keith moved through it all feeling distant inside his own body. Pidge and Hunk spent every spare moment looking for Lance. Shiro struggled to hold the team together.

            After the scrape with the Robeast, Allura hesitantly suggested she try to pilot the Blue Lion. She insisted it was only a temporary measure, that she wasn’t trying to replace Lance. It was only that they _needed_ Voltron, for safety, for effectiveness. Shiro practically had to drag Keith away from the room. It felt too much like giving up. He spiraled into panicking that if they didn’t need Lance back in order to form Voltron, Allura might start thinking they didn’t need Lance back at all.

            In the end, he needn’t have worried. No matter how Allura pleaded and cajoled, Blue would not awaken for her. She sat in her hangar where they had dropped her, lifeless.

*

            “We need to go to the Blade.”

            Everyone on the bridge turned to face him. Pidge and Hunk looked surprised and curious, Shiro taken aback, Coran largely unreadable. Allura’s lips were parted, a denial seated on the end of her tongue. Their eyes boring into him made him want nothing more than to turn tail and run, but he swallowed and planted his feet instead.

            “We’ve discussed this, Keith,” Allura said. She glowed white and silver under the pale Castle light, and her eyes were hard as diamond. It was like arguing with a goddess. “Going to the Blade is too risky.” His jaw tightened.

            “We’re out of options,” he said shortly. “We can’t form Voltron, we have no leads on Lance’s whereabouts, and every day only makes it more likely that Zarkon will find us again. Going to the Blade is the only option.”

            “He’s right, Princess,” Shiro said, standing up. “I know we’ve had this argument a dozen times over, but we _have_ to give it a try. Otherwise we’re just going to keep running in circles.”

            “We have freed a number of planets without the help of _any_ Galra,” Allura said tersely. “We are not _running in circles_. We are no use to anyone if we all fall into a trap.”

            “And we’re far less useful than we should be without Voltron,” Keith said. He was surprised by how steady he managed to keep his voice.

            The knife still burned a hole through him. He was hyperconscious of its shape against his skin, felt its presence eating away at him. But for the first time, he felt like he could argue for going to the Blade, because his own connection to it was no longer the most important reason to go. He had reprioritized. Because: Lance.

            “Pidge is a genius at hacking and the information we’ve been getting off these Galra command ships has been great, but we still haven’t had a single lead,” he said. “But if Ulaz was telling the truth, there are Blade members everywhere in the Galra Empire. The more people we can ask to look for Lance, the faster we’ll find him. At the very least, we can eliminate the idea that he’s been taken prisoner.” They would eliminate it, because confirming it was not a possibility to be born. His gut insisted Lance had to have gotten away. Lance was safe, or at least _relatively_ safe. He had to be.

            “I can’t put the rest of you at risk.” Allura was shaking her head. “I’ve lost one of you already, I won’t—” Keith blinked.

            “You didn’t lose him,” he said. “That wasn’t your fault.” Shiro opened his mouth and Keith knew what was coming because Shiro knew him too well for his own good, but Coran interrupted.

            “Not every Galra is like Zarkon, Princess,” he said gently. “Even 10,000 years ago, not all of them sided with Zarkon.” She whipped to face him.

            “So we should just trust them blindly because they claim they are on our side? My father once thought Zarkon was _his_ ally as well.”

            “You can’t judge an entire flock of _molovickies_ just because one of them steals your sandwich,” he said cheerfully. “We’ll be ready to fight or flee at a moment’s notice, Princess. But we need to at least consider them as a potential ally.” Allura and Coran held each other’s gaze for a long moment, until Keith was considering running away, afraid of getting caught between them. Finally, she turned back to the Paladins.

            “Pidge, Hunk, what do you two think?” she demanded.

            “I want to see the Marmora base,” Pidge sighed, stars in her eyes. “They managed to _fold space-time_ – and that was just an outpost. Imagine what they can do at their _base_.” She saw the look Allura was giving her and straightened up, clearing her throat. “The potential reward outweighs the risk,” she said, adopting her analytics voice. “I say we go.”

            “If there’s a chance it helps us get Lance back, I’m all for it,” Hunk said. He fidgeted, fingers resting over his stomach. “I agree with Pidge, it’s worth the risk.”

            Allura took a deep breath. “Fine,” she said. “I can see I’m outvoted. So long as we take every precaution—”

            “Done,” Keith said, breathlessly. She shot him a glare for interrupting her.

            “—then we’ll go to the Blade.”

*

            “You are not meant to go through that door.”

            Keith sucked in another ragged, gasping breath. The slash across his shoulder felt like it was sucking his energy away. His arm got heavier and clumsier with every passing moment. Still, grim faced, he snatched the knife from the impassive Blade and marched forward. He pressed his opposite hand against his shoulder, unsure if he was trying to staunch the bleeding or simply massage some life back into it.

            Bringing the knife to the Blade had been stupid and selfish, in retrospect. They needed this alliance and needed it badly and Keith had been impulsive and mucked it all up. As usual, he thought bitterly. Keith Kogane, ace pilot, whose life is eternally crashing at terminal velocity with both engines on fire. He had only wanted answers, only wanted just _one_ thing in this nightmare to make sense again. If he could have just waited a couple days, maybe they could have forged their alliance in peace and then he could have asked his questions anyway. He could have spared Shiro the embarrassment of his teammate recklessly ignoring a potential ally’s request to come unarmed. He could have spared himself the look of doubt on Shiro’s face when the Blade accused Keith of stealing the knife.

            He moved his hand down to his upper arm and pulled it close, trying to breathe through the pain. He didn’t think there was a bone left in his body that hadn’t been bruised. He couldn’t swear everything remained unbroken. At this point, he was stumbling forward on nothing but adrenaline and willpower. If he stopped to think about how much everything hurt, he would crumple to a heap on the floor. The door slid open and he stepped through.

            They were already rising up through the floor. How many fighters was he facing now? Seven? Eight? He could hardly see straight. It wouldn’t be a fight, only a beating. He was the smallest child on the schoolyard, with baggy pants gathered at his ankles and threadbare shirts, and these were the bullies, reminding him he didn’t have a prayer of punching back.

            Well, maybe not. But he usually managed to surprise them.

            They stepped off of the platforms that had brought them up through the floor. The platforms began to sink, with a cover sliding over to close the hole they left behind. His eyes narrowed.

            Abruptly, he was running. He conjured up a burst of energy from some last reserve he didn’t know he had to dash straight towards the Blades. He brought up his arm, ignoring the screech of protest from his nerves, and hurled his knife straight toward the sinking platform. It wedged between the cover and the floor, holding his exit open. The Blades, following the knife’s trajectory, paused just long enough for Keith to make the first strike. He drove his knee into one’s ribs, kicked another in the head, and then rushed straight towards a third. The last one caught him and used his own momentum to throw him off, but Keith was ready. He slammed into the ground on his back, and slid forward straight towards his knife. He snatched the knife up with a triumphant smile, the Blades hesitating around him, and jumped down the hole before the cover could seal it closed.

            He landed with a stumble in the bottom of what looked like an elevator shaft. He reached up and clutched his arm again as he caught his breath. A moment later, the door slid open into a mercifully empty hallway. “Guess I really wasn’t meant to go through that door.” His chuckle as he said it sounded pained, even to his own ears. He plodded out.

            The lights were blurring in front of his eyes. His hand was slipping down his arm to his elbow. Everything in him felt so _heavy_ , so unbearably heavy. He took a step slightly wrong, his toe caught, and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground. He lay still.

            The sound of footsteps made him open his eyes. The ground was cool and solid underneath him and about the only thing that didn’t make him feel like he was dying. Everything else was heat and pain and tearing and breaking and bleeding. As a shadow fell across his face, though, he managed to look up. A blurry figure in Paladin armor resolved itself into Shiro. From one blink to a next – how much time was he losing? – he was bending over next to him, offering a hand.

            “Hey, man,” he said, grinning. “You did it.”

            “Shiro?” he asked weakly, dragging the depths of his muscles for enough strength to reach out and grab his hand. For a moment, whatever he was saying didn’t matter. Keith didn’t care about anything except the reassuring strength of Shiro pulling him back to his feet, every joint and tendon moaning in the process. He hugged his arm to him again, his shoulders curling in, reflexively expecting another attacker to leap from the shadows.

            “Kolivan told me you lasted longer than anyone ever has in those battles,” Shiro was saying, and that didn’t sound right, but it didn’t really register until he continued, “You don’t have to keep this up.”

            His head jerked up. “What are you talking about?” he stammered.

            “Just give them the knife and let’s get out of here,” Shiro said. There was something wrong with his eyes, he noticed distantly, something about the way he was looking at him that seemed off, but his brain was too preoccupied by every bruise and cut demanding attention to draw any meaning from the observation.

            “I can’t give it to them, Shiro,” he said. He didn’t have the strength to make an argument. It was just a simple fact. In a world that wouldn’t fucking _stop_ taking things from him, it was one of a bare handful of things he’d managed to hold onto. It was one extremely tenuous link to a past he barely knew, but it was his only clue and the only prayer he had to make sense out of the nightmare he was living.

            “What is it with you and that _thing_?” Shiro asked. He sounded disgusted in a way that helped pull Keith out of his stupor and set his heart pounding painfully. Shiro never talked to him that way. Shiro was the _only_ one who never talked to him that way. Still, he tried to explain.

            “It’s the only connection I have to my past,” he said. His eyes drifted down, holding the knife up to look at the Blade’s symbol on its hilt. He looked back up at Shiro. “It’s my chance to learn who I really am.” He met Shiro’s gaze, willing him to understand, desperately needing him to understand.

            “You know exactly who you are, a Paladin of Voltron. We’re all the family you need.” Shiro said. Keith’s stomach felt like it lurched into his throat. He didn’t know how to tell Shiro how wrong he was. Shiro was the one who fit into the roles of a pilot and a cadet, a soldier and a commander. Shiro belonged in a uniform. Keith could never find himself there.

            “Shiro,” he said, his voice trembling. “You’re like a brother to me. But I _have_ to do this.”

            “No, you don’t. So just give them the knife.”

            “I can’t do that.” He was just repeating himself, but he couldn’t think straight long enough to be clever.

            “Just give up the knife, Keith! You’re only thinking of yourself, as usual!” The words hit like a sledgehammer to his chest, and he curled back into himself. He retreated and pulled himself away because it was the only way he had survived, building walls around himself. It was the only thing he knew how to do.

            “I’ve made my choice,” he said.

            “Then you’ve chosen to be alone,” Shiro said. Keith grit his teeth. He took a look at the knife, and when he looked back up there was nothing but Shiro’s back, walking away from him. That was too much. It wasn’t worth it. It couldn’t be worth it.

            “Shiro,” he said. “Wait!” He pushed himself forward, running after Shiro, but there was a blinding flash of light, and suddenly he was somewhere else entirely.

            The pale blue and silver light of the Castle bridge left him blinking in confusion after the dim hallways of the Blade’s base. This was wrong – this was an illusion, somehow, this wasn’t real, because he couldn’t have just teleported back onto the Castle – but more importantly, because Lance was standing right in front of him.

            Keith felt his breath catch and freeze in his throat. Lance had his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets – _the same jacket that he had been hugging to himself to get to sleep every night for the past two weeks, his cheeks flared red with shame_ – and was staring out the window at the dark expanse of stars. At the sound of his gasp, Lance turned, one side of his mouth quirked up in a smile.

            “Hey man,” he said, and his heart might as well have stopped right then.

            “La— N— You _can’t_ — This— I don’t understand.” Lance laughed.

            “Keith, calm down. C’mere.” Keith felt himself stumbling forward until he drew even with Lance, panting for breath. Lance had turned back to the window and sighed

            “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked. Abruptly, the Castle shook from the force of an explosion.

            “What was that?” he asked, spinning around. The view out the window remained calm.

            “Don’t worry about it. We’re safe in here,” Lance said. “Besides, don’t you want to catch up?”

            He didn’t understand how he had gotten here. For some reason, this didn’t seem possible – but he could no longer explain why. The memory slipped through his fingers. “More than anything,” he said. “Lance, are you—” His words were cut off by another explosion. “What _is_ that?” he asked.

            “It’s nothing important,” Lance said. Keith strode up to the Castle computers and brought up the camera feed. He yelped, nearly tripping over his own feet, fumbling for his bayard before he realized he wasn’t wearing it.

            “Lance, there are Galra in the Castle – they’re _everywhere_ – how did this happen? Where is everyone?” Lance just watched him, unspeaking. Keith turned. “Come on, we gotta go—” A hand reached out and caught his sleeve.

            “Wait,” Lance said. He froze.

            “Why?”

            “It’s dangerous out there,” Lance answered softly. He stepped up next to Keith, his fingers reaching around his elbow, gently holding him still. “This is the only place we’re safe.” Keith was shaking his head, senselessly, helplessly.

            “We’ll be fine,” he said.  “Just— Just come with me. We gotta go.” Lance’s fingers tightened around him as another explosion shook the Castle.

            “Keith,” he said, his voice low and quick. “For once in your hotheaded, mullet-stricken life, _listen to me_. This isn’t our fight. I can take you somewhere both of us will be safe, really safe, from all this Galra crap, and I can explain everything once we get there – where I’ve been, why the Garrison lied to us so much, I can even explain your stupid knife.” Keith realized Lance’s free hand was holding the flat of the blade against his palm. He looked down and admired it for a moment before catching Keith’s eyes again. “The same people who saved me when I got tossed through that wormhole, they’re coming. They can help us. You just have to wait a little longer. Then we’ll both be safe.”

            He was close enough Keith could feel his breath puff out against his cheek when he spoke. With a gentleness that Keith didn’t know he possessed, he guided Lance’s hand away from his knife. Lance released his arm as he tossed the knife aside, his eyes fixed on him. Then, very carefully, Keith brought both hands up to frame Lance’s face, his touch feather light against his skin. The hope shining in Lance’s dark eyes made his heart seize and stutter inside his chest and he squeezed his eyes shut. He leaned in. Their lips pressed together for a single breath.

            “Lance,” he whispered, his eyes still closed. “I’m so sorry. But you’re not real.” Another explosion shook the Castle and he opened his eyes. Hurt was etched across Lance’s face.

            Every slash and bruise, every twinge and throb of pain, every sore and awful inch he’d had to drag himself forward through those endless battles — none of it even came close to how difficult it was to let go of Lance and step away from him.

            “I want you safe,” he said, his voice trembling again, “but if we don’t keep fighting, then there will be nowhere in the universe we can go to get away from the Galra.”

            “You could stay,” Lance whispered.

            “That’s not who we are,” he said. He took another step backward, a pained smile on his face. “I’ll find you, Lance. The real you.”

            He turned and ran for the rest of the Castle.

*

            He could still feel the ground rumbling beneath him and hear explosions in the distance. He opened his eyes. He was flat on his back in the Blade’s base, rocks crumbling as it shook under an assault.

            He heard running footsteps and Shiro came into view, pausing a bare second to take in his battered condition before he’d bent down to help him up, hands wrapped around his sides. “Keith, are you okay?” he asked urgently. There was no time to reply. Five Blades had followed Shiro and stood battle-ready in the doorway.

            “Stop what you’re doing!”

            “What are you talking about?” Keith asked. The world was still blurry and tilted violently as Shiro helped him get an arm around his shoulders to hold him upright. He gasped for breath. “What’s going on?” He had barely gotten the words out before the base shook once again. Rock tumbled from the ceiling. Keith leaned all his weight into Shiro, concentrating on staying vertical.

            “Call off your beast,” Kolivan ordered. He didn’t have the strength to wonder what he meant. Shiro was furious – was he still mad at Keith? Had that conversation even been real? – and demanding that the Blades let them leave. Keith wearily took an assessment of his own body. If they had to fight their way out, he was worse than dead weight.

            “You’re not leaving with that blade. It does not belong to you. You _failed_ to awaken it.” Anger sparked in his bitter, exhausted body.

            “What does that _mean_?” he burst out. Hadn’t they done enough, hurt him enough already?

            They didn’t bother to answer. One of them only said “Give up the blade,” unsheathing his own and dashing towards them. Shiro pulled Keith’s arm off his shoulder and rushed to meet the Blade, prosthetic hand igniting in purple. Keith barely stayed on his feet. Just as Shiro clashed against the Blade, he called after him.

            “Wait!” He straightened up. “Just take the knife.” He held it out to them. Let it end. There were more important things. Shiro and the Blades stood down, watching him. “Whatever happened in the past, however I got this knife, it doesn’t matter. Not against the universe.” His eyes flashed down to the knife for a moment. “I know who I am.” He looked back up, holding his gaze steady. “We all need to work together to defeat Zarkon. If that means I give up this knife, fine. Take it.”

            Before anyone could move to take the knife from him, a strange, bell-like note seemed to echo from it, and it glowed with blinding purple light. Keith’s eyes widened as he felt the knife _change_ in his hands. He heard an awestruck voice murmur, “You’ve awoken the Blade.” The next thing he knew, he was holding a sword, heavy and solid in his hand. The Blades watched him, unreadable behind their masks. “The only way this is possible,” Kolivan said, “is if Galra blood runs through your veins.”

            Keith felt horrible confirmation crash through him like poison.

*

            Shiro kept a steadying hand on his shoulder as he piloted them back towards the Castle. Fortunately for him, Red was doing most of the work, keeping them on course even when his hands trembled. Kolivan was a stoic presence behind them.

            Shiro leaned over to mute the comm link with the Castle, cutting off their friends’ relieved cheers. Keith shot him a quick, panicked look.

            “Shiro, you— you need to tell them for me. About…”

            “Being part Galra?” Kolivan prompted.

            “That,” Keith said. He tasted copper and bile. “I can’t do it, but I can’t keep it from them – they deserve to know.” Shiro looked at him doubtfully.

            “I don’t know, Keith. I’m still… processing it, myself, and they’d probably take it better coming from you.” Keith was shaking his head, sweaty bangs sticking to his helmet.

            “Shiro, please,” he said.

            “Look, you need to get into a healing pod when we get back, anyway. You’re pretty cut up.” He threw one brief but malevolent glance at Kolivan. “Get some rest, you’ll feel better in the morning, and then we can talk to the team.”

            “I’ll be fine, but the team has to know,” he said. He struggled to keep his voice even. “Please, Shiro, _please_ just do this for me.” The knife had shrunk back down to its former size almost immediately. Keith had, somewhat unwillingly, stuck it back in his belt once the Blade refused to take it from him. It still burned a hole into his skin. He sucked in a deep breath, ignoring the protest from his ribs. “I can’t… I just can’t.” Shiro’s eyes softened.

            “Okay, Keith,” he said. “I’ll let them know. But you’ll need to be prepared for them to want to ask you questions later.” Keith sighed, some of the whiplash tension leaving his body as he exhaled.

            “Thank you,” he said.

            “We’re here,” Shiro said, straightening up. Keith thankfully pulled the controls, slowing Red down as they flew into the hangar. Coran, Allura, Hunk, and Pidge were waiting for them.

            Shiro gave him a critical eye when he wobbled as he stood up, but he managed to stand straight, pull off his helmet, and walk down the ramp without trouble. Kolivan stopped at the bottom and his mask retracted, revealing purple and red fur, with a long scar over his right eye. He went to one knee, pulling his hood back.

            “Princess Allura,” he said. “It’s good to see that the rumors are true. You’re still alive after all these years.”

            “So is Zarkon,” Allura said, her voice reserved and cold. Keith’s hand clenched around his helmet. “Can we consider _you_ our ally in the fight against him?”

            “Yes,” Kolivan said, rising. “Unfortunately, the Blade has had to lay low of late. I received word from one of our allies in the Galra hierarchy that they had become aware of our presence, and he has not checked in since then. I am afraid I must assume he was compromised.”

            “We should sit down and discuss our partnership. Any information you can offer on the Galra Empire would be welcome, as our own is often sadly outdated,” Coran said. “Princess, why don’t we go upstairs?” Allura jerked her head.

            “Very well,” she said. “I suppose we do have a lot to talk about.”

            “Shiro will explain what happened down on the base,” Keith said hurriedly. “I need to— I’ll be back up later.” Pidge tilted her head inquisitively and Shiro shot him a disapproving look, but the others seemed largely disinterested. Keith had to fight the urge to run to the hangar exit. However, as soon as he was outside and into the elevator, he collapsed against the wall and exhaled, closing his eyes.

            The ride up was too swift and he stumbled out, blinking against a wave of exhaustion. He stumbled his way back towards his room on autopilot, only trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other without face-planting. There were too many things whirling through his head to follow. Every cell in his body begged for attention and rest, but his brain kept replaying the _other_ parts of the trials instead, on some kind of hellish loop. _He was selfish, he was alone, he would always choose to be alone, he had to be alone because he had Galra blood, Shiro thought he was selfish, he had Galra blood, a false Lance smiled a too-real smile and asked him to stay, he had Galra blood he had Galra blood Shiro thought he was selfish he had Galra blood the feel of Lance’s lips on his he had Galra blood the feel of Lance’s lips the feel of Lance’s lips the feel of Lance’s_ —

            He was outside Lance’s room, and he realized, with an abrupt shudder, that he was _angry_. Fuck this, fuck the universe watching him crash and burn, it was all fine until _Lance_ got caught up in it. Lance didn’t deserve to get hurt because of his fucking stupidity and shitty luck. He would weather the blows and punch his way out of bad luck and accept his ancestry and swallow his self-loathing if Allura never looked him in the eye again. But _Lance_ , Lance deserved to be safe. Not in some shitty fantasy world where nothing bad could reach them, but he deserved to be _real_ and he deserved to be there fighting beside them, with the other Paladins guarding his back. Keith spun on his heel and went back to the elevators to the hangars – but this time, he took the elevator down to Blue.

            He stormed into her hangar with murder writ across his face. His arm throbbed and his lungs burned, but he ignored it all as he marched across to Blue. She stood impassively, yellow eyes cold and alien, as he punched the control panel to open the hangar to space. The door slid up with a rush of freezing air, a sudden chill he could feel even through his Paladin armor, only Altean tech keeping the room from turning into a vacuum. He turned to Blue, glaring at her.

            “Come on!” he shouted, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “You can find him! The door’s open – just GO!” She didn’t move. She wasn’t even looking at him. He stumbled to her and kicked her claws uselessly. “Come ON!” His voice slid up in pitch until it hit a scream, the words cracking and shattering in his throat. “Red found me. Zarkon found Black from halfway across the universe. You _have_ to be able to find HIM!” He pulled his bayard and brought the sword down on her foot. It sparked as it bounced off and he threw it aside. His legs, shaking with exertion, abruptly gave out from under him and he went to his knees. He pounded on Blue’s foot weakly with his fist. “Please,” he whispered. “Please. He needs you. Please find him.” He dropped his head onto her foot, his fists stilled. His breath was coming in short and sharp gasps as bruises blossomed across his body. He closed his eyes. “Please bring him back.” He could barely hear his own whisper.

            Suddenly, there was a loud creaking of metal. His head jerked up and he found himself nose-to-nose with Blue, her yellow eyes boring into his own. He swallowed. For a long moment, they stayed there, a frozen tableau: the great Blue Lion crouching to where the Red Paladin knelt by her foot, watching each other. Keith’s breath was tight as he held Blue’s unbreakable gaze. Voltron echoed in his head, the distant voices of Paladins and lions spread through time and space. The freezing air from the open hangar door spread across his body until he was cold and numb and could no longer feel the floor beneath his feet. He found himself in a dark emptiness, with only Blue and the yellow glow of her eyes left of reality. For just a moment, too distant to reach and gone as soon as it appeared, but indisputably real, he saw Lance. His eyes flashed open and met Keith’s, dark as the sea and wide with surprise.

            Lance disappeared and the world rushed back into being, the hard metal of the floor pressing into his knees, the sound of the air rushing through the hangar bursting in his head. Keith gasped, sitting back onto his feet. He looked up at Blue, still watching him, but with none of the frightening intensity of before. Hesitantly, he reached up and brushed his fingertips against the end of her nose.

            “Thank you,” he murmured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *points, screams* WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?! Paladins besides Lance actually appearing in person, what?? Blasphemy
> 
> Special thank you to [@puppetmaster55](http://puppetmaster55.tumblr.com/) for [sharing his theories](http://puppetmaster55.tumblr.com/post/167717203325/thatgirlonstage-thatgirlonstage-everything) about how the Trials of Marmora work with me; I pulled heavily from his ideas for this chapter. You should definitely go read his fic [Black to Blue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9630881/chapters/21759365), and its sequel Blue to Black; it has all the sweet sweet Black Paladin!Lance content in ways you didn’t even know you needed, and the _softest_ Shance; got even my Klance-adoring heart highkey invested in that ship.
> 
> I... really hope this chapter didn't suck? I had a LOT I was trying to get through and I swear I didn't mean for it to be this long. Please leave comments!!!! You guys know I love hearing your thoughts :D
> 
> Finally, in case it wasn’t clear, the moment Keith sees Lance is the same moment that Lance remembered the bonding moment and saw Keith at the end of Ch2 :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving and new jobs are hard, oops, but I'm back!!
> 
>  **This is a good time to remind you all that this fic is tagged "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings"** This has nothing to do with sex stuff, or the fic would have a higher rating (and I just wouldn't do an untagged fic with sexual content that might make people uncomfortable), but for other things. You have been warned. Who knows if they will or won't happen.
> 
> (If you need trigger warnings, you can always shoot me a message on tumblr, [@thatgirlonstage](thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com), but be warned they might involve spoilers)
> 
> EDIT: I can't get the hyperlink to work for some reason but just go to tumblr and search my URL and you can find me

### TWO MONTHS AGO

 

            “Guys!” Keith burst into the room, breathless and still battered, shivering from exertion. “Guys, I—” He cut himself off as the Paladins, seated around the couches, all turned to face him, their faces twisted with a range of emotions he didn’t want to untangle. Shiro shifted, biting at the inside of his cheek.

            “Keith— I thought you were going to get some rest,” he said. Keith didn’t respond. Coran’s eyes were scanning across him, dark and clouded. Allura wasn’t looking at him at all, but somewhere past him and off to his left, her face set and hard as diamond. “I… just told them about. About what you found out, about being part Galra.” Keith flinched with his entire body. All of a sudden, he was burningly, bitterly glad that Lance wasn’t here.

            He swallowed. “I saw Lance,” he said. Everyone perked up. Hunk leapt to his feet, and Pidge seemed to forget any reservations instantly, her eyes shining as she looked at him, her fingers twitching to leap into action.

            “What? Where?”

            “Through Blue. She showed me, a, a vision, I guess? I didn’t totally understand it, but I knew that it was real. He’s alive, and it seems like he’s fine.”

            “But _where_ is he?”

            “I don’t know,” Keith admitted. He dropped his gaze to the floor. He could see his legs trembling more than he could feel them. “I didn’t get anything concrete, really. I just know that he’s okay. And… I think he saw me as well.” He took a deep breath and looked back up. Allura still wouldn’t look at him, but the rest of them were fixed on him now. “I don’t think Blue could maintain the connection any longer than she did, maybe because he’s too far away, I don’t know. But she wants him back as badly as we do. If we can just—” He felt one of his knees tremble so badly it almost gave out from under him— “If we can just get _close_ enough—”

            Shiro was there, at his elbow, holding him up, sympathetic eyes that always saw Keith more clearly than he wanted them to. “Keith, you need a healing pod. You’re hurt.” Keith shook his head, but he didn’t have the energy to deny it properly. “Come on,” Shiro said. He steered Keith forcefully back towards the door. He grabbed the doorframe just before they got out and looked back over his shoulder. Allura was still pointedly looking at a wall rather than him. He opened his mouth, but no words came. He let Shiro guide him down to the med bay. While he was peeling off his Paladin body suit, wincing as it stuck to his cuts and scrapes, Shiro tapped commands into one of the healing pods.

            “How did they take it?” Keith mumbled. He heard Shiro pause behind him. He kept his head bent, sliding a healing pod suit over his boxers.

            “They’re understandably shocked,” Shiro said carefully. “So am I, still. We all need a little time to adjust to the idea.” Keith refused to turn around, zipping the suit up carefully. “Keith. It’ll be okay.” He sighed.

            “No,” he said. “It won’t.” He climbed into the pod, still not quite meeting Shiro’s eyes. “See you in a few vargas.” Shiro paused, looking like he wanted to say something, but Keith hit the button on the pod and the glass slid shut before he could. He closed his eyes as he breathed in the sedative, drifting into merciful blackness.

 

*

 

            He couldn’t remember the last time they hadn’t been at loggerheads with each other. If there were more than two or three of them in a room at a time these days, they were fighting. Whether Lance himself had been the stabilizing force they were now missing, or if his absence was just the lynchpin to a whole host of stressors elevating tensions to a constant fever pitch, Keith didn’t know. In any event, he decided not to dwell on what it might mean that he woke up in the healing pod alone, and instead be grateful he didn’t stumble out into an argument.

            He made his way to his bedroom to get changed, sighing in explosive relief that every twitch of his muscles no longer sent arrows of pain through him. He was a little stiff, and the faint remnants of a bruise still darkened his shoulder, but otherwise the healing pod had done its work as flawlessly as always. His stomach rumbled, embarrassingly loud. He pulled on his jacket, relaxing into the familiar leather, and made his way down to the kitchen. He was halfway through a bowl of food goo when he realized someone was standing behind him.

            He jumped at the sight of Pidge, framed in the doorway, glasses glinting as she stared at him. For a moment, neither of them moved. Keith swallowed a mouth of food goo and dropped his gaze. Pidge blinked.

            “Hey, Keith,” she said.

            “Hey,” he said. His voice quavered slightly at the end and he swallowed again. “Where, uh. Where is everybody?”

            She finally came into the room, dropping a holopad on the table next to him, and grabbing a plate. “Dunno,” she shrugged. She pulled up one of the food goo hoses and swirled a serving onto her plate. “Probably resting? We were talking with Kolivan for like three and a half vargas.” Keith spread the food across his plate, appetite lost.

            “Um,” he said. She dropped the plate on the table and plopped onto the seat next to him. Keith froze, afraid to move closer, afraid to lean away. She shoveled a spoonful of goo into her mouth.

            “He’th thery thrth,” she said.

            “What?” She swallowed.

            “I said, he’s very thorough.”

            “Oh.”

            Pidge took another bite of goo, chewed and swallowed. Keith bit the edge of his empty spoon, licking off residual flecks of goo. Neither of them looked at each other. Pidge shoved another bite inside her mouth. A bit of green smeared across her cheek. Abruptly, she shoved the plate away from her.

            “This is ridiculous,” she said. “So you’re part Galra, so what? Are you going to suddenly turn purple and start growing fur and get glowy yellow eyes? Because if you are, please please _please_ let me study your DNA, that would be _amazing_.” Keith leaned back, stuttering, as Pidge adjusted her glasses, her gaze piercing him. “Have you ever noticed any anatomical anomalies? Do you have any senses that are better than a human average? If you grew your nails out, would they eventually become claws?”

            “I don’t— What?”

            “I mean, I wonder if Galra even have the same base DNA strands as us, there must be a fairly significant similarity in our genetic makeup or interbreeding wouldn’t have been possible to begin with, which is _such_ a fascinating study in convergent evolution, but maybe Galra DNA is just more adaptable than human DNA somehow…” Pidge was prattling to herself now, tapping out notes on her holopad. Keith dropped his spoon, realizing he was gripping the edge of his chair far too forcefully.

            “So you’re okay with… me?” he asked. Pidge paused, her fingers hovering over the keyboard, and shot Keith an exasperated look.

            “This proves other humans before us have had contact with aliens, Keith. Do you know how much I’m geeking out right now? Oh man, if my dad knew about this…” She trailed off, a brief twist in her face, before she shook her head and resumed typing.

            “It’s not like I turned out to be half-Altean. Or literally _anything_ besides Galra.”

            “Just because you got I-am-your-father-ed doesn’t make you a bad guy, Keith,” Pidge said without looking up. “The Galra Empire sucks, but you’re still you. You’re still the same guy who flew into a fight against Zarkon head-on to buy the rest of us time to rescue Allura. Whatever species you are doesn’t get to decide what kind of person— being— whatever, you know what I mean.”

            “It wasn’t my dad who was Galra,” Keith said.

            “Huh?”

            “You said, your father, but my dad was human. At least I’m pretty sure he was.” Pidge blinked behind her glasses.

            “Right, but, it’s—” Her fingers froze, and she slowly turned her head to look at him. “Keith,” she said. She sat up, leaned forward, and grabbed his shoulders. “Are you telling me you’ve never seen _Star Wars_?”

            Keith shrugged. “I never really watched movies as a kid.” Pidge continued to stare at him until he squirmed. “Uh… Pidge?” Her fingers tightened.

            “Oh my god,” she said. “Oh my _god_. This should be an unfriending offense, but Keith, I think you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s never been spoiled for the _Star Wars_ twist.” She released him and sat back. “You and me, the _second_ we get back to Earth, _Star Wars_ marathon. And don’t you _dare_ ask any of the other Paladins what the twist is. I will literally never forgive you if you ruin this for me.”

            “Um.”

            “This is not a negotiation.”

            “ _Star Wars_. Okay. Got it,” Keith said. Pidge grinned from ear to ear, then turned back and started tapping on her holopad again. “So, uh… What did you guys talk about with Kolivan?”

            “A lot of stuff,” Pidge said, eyes still fixed on her holopad. “Allura still took some convincing to listen to him, especially after Shiro dropped your bombshell on us. She’s, uh, feeling a little frosty towards you.”

            “I could tell,” Keith muttered. Pidge’s fingers paused minutely before they resumed their tapping.

            “Right, well, anyway, once we all got over that hump, Kolivan was explaining some stuff about how the Blade is structured. They have secret agents in almost every facet of the Empire, it’s _incredible_. But, uh, this one guy, Commander Thace — they think he was compromised around a month ago. The last message he sent was that they were interrogating people about who helped Voltron escape when we went to rescue Allura, and then he’s just gone radio silent apparently.”

            “I guess that shield didn’t come down through sheer luck after all,” Keith said. His fingers felt oddly numb as he picked up his spoon and started smearing goo across his plate again. Pidge reached over to her own plate, grabbed her spoon and swallowed a bite of goo before continuing to type.

            “Right,” she said. “And apparently losing Thace has thrown a _lot_ of plans out the window. Kolivan was scarily pragmatic about it, actually, but they definitely just lost years and years of work with him gone.”

            “And we can’t even offer him Voltron,” Keith said. Pidge’s fingers paused again. She sat back in her chair and fidgeted for a moment.

            “Yeah,” she said, not quite looking at Keith. “Kolivan was… less than enthusiastic to find out about that. He said he’d put word out to every Blade to find out if any of them have seen the Blue Paladin, but he definitely wants us to replace Lance ASAP.”

            “Well we’re not going to do that.” The harshness in his voice scraped the edges of his throat. Pidge looked at the floor.

            “I don’t like it any more than you do, but we might not have a choice,” she mumbled.

            He couldn’t remember moving, but he was on his feet, palms pressed flat against the table, his voice cracking against the walls he put up trying to keep it even and quiet. “Pidge—”

            “Don’t,” she said, putting up a hand to stop him. She stood up, turned to face him now. “Look, we’re still looking for Lance. Every extra minute I have I’m coming up with algorithms that might help expand our scanners or ways to track the ship or anything else I can think of. But no one knows better than I do that _we can’t just drop everything else_. You gave me the same lecture when I was going to leave to look for my family. The universe needs Voltron. _All_ of Voltron.”

            “But Lance is—”

            “What?” Pidge asked. She glared at him. Her hands balled into fists at her side. “Do you want a broken nose?” she demanded. Keith took a deep breath, tried to steady himself.

            “Lance is the Blue Paladin. We don’t even know if Blue will accept anyone else while he’s still out there.” Pidge’s fists relaxed.

            “We don’t, but we have to try,” she said. She dropped back into her seat with a world-weary sigh. “It doesn’t matter right now, anyway. The Blade has asked for our help rescuing an ally of theirs. Some guy named Slav, apparently he’s like the smartest guy in the universe and the Galra have him locked up in this super high-security prison made just for him. They haven’t been able to get their hands on the prison blueprints and they _really_ don’t like sending their people in blind.”

            “But they have no problem asking us to do it?” Pidge folded her arms.

            “Ironically, we could really use Lance’s sonic cannon to do a scan of the base, but failing that, I’m certain Hunk and I can jerry-rig something that’ll work. Stealth is key, because if they lock that place down we’ll have no hope of finding a way out, so the plan is for me, Shiro, and one of the Blades to take Green and keep the Castle well out of range unless things really go sideways.”

            “Things always go sideways.” Pidge shrugged. She picked up the holopad and made one last note on it before hugging it to her chest.

            “If you have any ideas for how to look for Lance while we’re gone, I’m all ears.”

            “All my ideas are terrible.”

            The smallest smile quirked up the corner of her mouth. “Guess I’ll just have to keep doing all the thinking around here then.”

            “I’ll stick to swords and fancy flying.” She stood up and mock saluted, holopad clutched in one arm.

            “Catch you later, ace.” Keith snorted. “Don’t forget,” she called over her shoulder, “if you start growing fur, I expect cheek swabs. I will come for you and I will be armed with Q-tips!”

 

*

 

            The team got Slav out of Beta Traz by the skin of their teeth. Antok, the Blade who went with Shiro and Pidge, managed to temporarily distract the warden of the prison by chasing his Yupper into the droid maintenance room and leaving him to wreak havoc, but even so, there was a nasty fight at the end. They turned back up at the Castle looking bruised and battered, a bizarre alien with enough arms to resemble a centipede clinging onto Antok’s torso for dear life. Shiro was red in the face, looking fit to pop a blood vessel. Keith mouthed _What happened?_ from across the room, but before Shiro could reply, Pidge burst to the front of the crowd.

            “Hunk! Coran! Allura! I have a lead on Matt! I might have a way to find him!”

            “That is very likely. In 64% of all realities where you discover that footage it leads directly to you finding your brother,” the centipede alien said. Keith could swear the color of Shiro’s face crept a shade closer to crimson, but when Keith raised his eyebrows, Shiro just shook his head. Keith could see his jaw muscles clenching from across the Caste bridge.

            “Uh, I guess you’re Slav?” Hunk said. Antok didn’t move a muscle as the alien climbed off of him and stood up.

            “I am. And you are the Yellow Paladin in 98% of all realities.”

            “What do you mean, realities? Can you—” Hunk suddenly bent down, getting eye level with Slav. “Can you see into other realities?” he demanded.

            “Hunk!” Pidge said. Hunk jumped.

            “Sorry! What did you find?” Pidge rushed to the bridge controls, uploading footage from her personal holopad.

            “He was in a Galra prison, but he escaped,” she said excitedly. An image of Matt Holt, hollow-cheeked and coughing, appeared on screen, surrounded by aliens ushering him through a hallway. “These guys helped him escape.”

            “They are using nano-thermite titanium boron,” Antok said. “That’s a very difficult explosive to procure.” Pidge’s eyes shone.

            “So if we can trace who sold the explosive, then we might be able to trace the people who found Matt,” she said. Antok inclined his head.

            “The Blade has had to procure it on a few occasions. I can direct you to our supplier.”

            “Nano-thermite titanium boron is only sold legally in 12% of all realities. It is extremely dangerous. Your chances of dying increase exponentially if you seek out someone who sells—”

            “Slav,” Antok said, dropping a hand onto Slav’s shoulder. “Let’s find you somewhere to get cleaned up.”

            “If I leave this room I might get hopelessly lost in the hallways of the Castle and find myself trapped in a ventilation shaft in a desperate attempt to find my way back to—”

            “Not to worry, I’ll show you the way,” Coran announced, moving forward. He, Antok, and Slav made their way out of the room, with the latter still rattling off impossibly deadly scenarios. Keith sidled up to Shiro.

            “Is he… always like that?”

            “I don’t want to talk about it,” Shiro said. Keith fidgeted with the sleeve of his jacket for a moment.

            “I guess Pidge didn’t find anything in their databases about Lance?” he said finally. Shiro shook his head.

            “Look on the bright side,” he said, reaching out and squeezing Keith’s shoulder. “It may mean that the Galra don’t have him. Maybe he’s out there, somewhere safe, trying to get a signal to us from some backwater planet.”

            “Or maybe it means he’s—” He stopped, his fingers pressing so hard into his palms that he could feel his nails through his gloves. There was no word that came at the end of that sentence.

            “We’ll find him, Keith,” Shiro said.

            “ _When?_ ” he asked, his voice taut.

            “As soon as we can. For now, let’s see if we can’t help Pidge find her brother, alright?” Keith shook his head. He was drowning, slipping ever deeper and darker into an abyss that would crush him. Half the time he felt like he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could barely see straight. He didn’t know what he was doing here anymore. He’d lost sight of whatever goal it was he’d once had. And every day Lance’s trail got colder.

            “I need to go,” he said abruptly. He dashed out of the room before he had to see Shiro’s face.

            In all the nights he’d taken to sleeping in Lance’s room, he had never once turned on the light. Somehow, if he did, it would be admitting what he was doing. It would be snooping. As long as he felt his way across it in the dark, crawled onto the covers and cradled his ears with Lance’s headphones without ever once _seeing_ what he was doing, it wasn’t real. It was just a fantasy he played in his head.

            Lance’s collection of music was seemingly endless, and Keith had eventually stumbled upon some of the poppy, upbeat type tunes he’d initially expected, but he liked the classical music the best. And Lance had hours upon hours of it — string quartets and pianos and harps and flutes and entire orchestras, playing from across the centuries. Keith mostly couldn’t keep track of which was which, all named Adagio this and C minor that. But he’d select one at random and let it drown out the roaring silence that engulfed him whenever he was alone. He still avoided going to bed, usually, working himself to exhaustion first, but he slept longer nights now. The nightmares didn’t wake him, sweaty and painfully conscious, after just three or four hours.

            He was hardly exhausted – he’d spent most of the day doing nothing around the Castle but wait to hear whether he and Hunk would have to fly in to save Pidge and Shiro’s asses. Still, something about the sight of Matt Holt had overwhelmed him. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stand upright a moment longer. And so he crashed his way into Lance’s room, collapsing on the bed and burying his face against the pillow. His fingers found the now-familiar touch of the jacket and he huddled around it. Reaching behind him, to the nightstand, he grabbed the headphones and pulled them over his ears, barely noticing what song he selected, only hoping it would make the quiet go away. He squeezed his eyes shut and begged the world to vanish.

            The light clicking on startled him instantly awake. His eyes flew open, his hand half-reaching for his knife before he remembered he’d left it in his own room, the headphones falling off his ears. Hunk was standing in the doorway, slack-jawed. Their eyes met. Neither of them spoke for a very, very long time. Keith was frozen, his brain utterly blank. He could only meet Hunk’s dumbfounded gaze with equal shock.

            “I— I came… I… Lance borrowed— Allen wrench.” Whatever Hunk was saying, it made no sense. Keith just continued to stare. Hunk pointed. “On the nightstand,” he said. In the light for the first time, Keith spotted a dull gleam of metal. He reached over, grabbed it, and tossed it to Hunk, who fumbled but managed to catch it out of the air. He held it up to Keith. “Uh. Thanks. Um.” He turned sharply and left the way he came. The door slid shut behind him. Keith still couldn’t move, couldn’t even think, could only stare at where Hunk had been. His mouth was dry, he noticed errantly. He ran his tongue across his lips. The door slid open again.

            “No, sorry, I’m sorry, _what_?” Hunk said, coming back in. He was still gripping the Allen wrench and he pointed it at Keith. “Can you please explain— _what_?”

            “Um,” Keith managed. The door slid shut behind Hunk, closing them in together.

            “Is this— Is this a weird Galra thing? Are you, like, scent-marking the entire Castle or something? Or do you get visions of where people are if you have a piece of their clothing? Is—”

            “It’s not a Galra thing!” he protested desperately. He could feel his face burning. “It’s not— _ew_.”

            Hunk sank into the chair by the bed. “Okay. Okay. I, I need an explanation.”

            “I couldn’t sleep,” Keith said. His face was so hot he thought it might start to make him dizzy.

            “Is this normally what you do when you can’t sleep? Do Galra usually sleep with—”

            “It’s not a Galra thing,” Keith said through gritted teeth.

            “Dude, help me out here.” Hunk spread his hands. Keith’s tongue was a useless, uncontrollable muscle in his mouth.

            “I… don’t have an explanation,” he muttered, wilting. Hunk shoved the Allen wrench into a pocket and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

            “So…”

            “Please don’t tell the others,” Keith said in a rush. “Please.” Hunk’s lips parted and his eyebrows drew together.

            “Keith, are you okay?” he asked. Keith shook his head, turned away and buried his face back into the pillow. “Is this… about you turning Galra? Uh…”

            “No,” Keith mumbled, his voice muffled. He pulled his head up and rested his chin on the pillow. “The Galra stuff is its own set of nightmares. But that’s not what _this_ is about.”

            “Then, then what—” Hunk’s eyes travelled over Keith, taking in Lance’s jacket, the dislodged headphones still playing the distant sound of a clarinet, and his eyes went wide. “Ohhhhh,” he said.

            “It’s exactly what it looks like,” Keith said miserably. His hand curled fists around the sheets. “But lately I can’t get to sleep any other way.” He dropped his face back onto the pillow. “I know it’s stupid.”

            “What? No,” Hunk said. “No, it’s not— It’s not stupid at all.” Keith just pressed his face further down. “Look, dude, I went through a phase where I had a crush on him too. _I get it_.” Keith turned his head to look at Hunk.

            “How’d you get over it?” he asked, half a crazed laugh in his voice.

            “Pfff,” Hunk said. “A lot of drinks, an aborted sloppy make out session, way too much personal information, and he fell asleep on top of me so both of us woke up with no feeling in our legs. We got up the next morning and mutually agreed that it had been weird and we’d never do it again. Lance is a great guy, and I love him, but we just didn’t click that way. You, though—”

            “If you ever tell him about this I will murder you in your sleep,” Keith said. Hunk put his hands up in surrender.

            “Geez, calm down. I’m not gonna tell anyone.”

            “I’ll stop,” Keith muttered.

            “You don’t have to, you know.”

            “I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s weird, it’s an invasion of privacy, I just. I shouldn’t be doing this to begin with.”

            Hunk hesitated. “I don’t… think he’d _mind_ , per se.” Keith laughed, the sound hollow and hysterical.

            “Hunk, you’re sweet, but have you _met_ us?” Hunk sighed, and there was something resigned and exasperated in his voice when he spoke.

            “Fine, stop doing it, then. I’ll take your secret to the grave.”

            They rested in a long pause of silence. Keith picked at the sheet aimlessly. Hunk shifted on his chair.

            “So… _Is_ it a Galra thing, though?”

            “Oh my _god_.”

            “How Galra even _are_ you? Was it your dad? Your mom?”

            “My mom, I guess? I don’t know, I never met her. Do we have to have this conversation _right now_?”

            “Did the Blade of Marmora teach you the secret Galra handshake, or—?”

            “This entire situation is already literally the worst moment of my life. Can you please not make it any worse?”

            “Sorry,” Hunk said. There was another long moment of silence. Hunk fidgeted, fingers picking at each other, until he burst out, “Are you going to turn purple?”

            “I didn’t just _turn Galra_ , I’m not going to turn purple out of nowhere.”

            “I don’t know, you’re an alien. Aliens are weird.”

            “I’m not an alien!”

            “You’re more alien than me. You’re like, half alien. I’m not at all alien.”

            “I am begging you to stop.”

            “Okay, okay.” The two boys sighed in unison. Keith drooped into the sheets, unwilling to return to his own room and the demons in it. He felt Hunk’s eyes on him and tried to squeeze every last second out of Lance’s bed.

            “Do you want a hug?” Hunk asked abruptly. Keith slowly lifted his head up.

            “What?” he asked. Hunk shrugged.

            “I’m a really good hugger,” he said.

            “Um.”

            “You seem like you could use a hug.”

            “…Okay, I guess,” Keith said doubtfully. He sat up, blinking uncertainly, as Hunk moved to sit next to him. All of a sudden, he was wrapped in Hunk’s arms, warm and tight around him. He leaned almost unconsciously into Hunk’s chest, his eyes sliding closed, and breathed deep.

            “Thanks for not freaking out,” he mumbled. Hunk laughed and Keith’s entire body shook with the sound.

            “Oh there was plenty of freaking out, trust me. That was the last thing I expected to see on this ship. And this is a ship that once attacked me with food.” Keith didn’t have a response, so he just wrapped his arms around Hunk’s back and squeezed him closer. “Hey, I’m here for you, you know? We’re basically a little space family up here, we’ve gotta watch out for each other.” Hunk let go of Keith and squeezed his shoulder in parting. “Stay here, if it helps you sleep. What Lance doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” Keith sighed and buried back into the pillows, too tired to argue any more. Just as he closed his eyes, he heard the soft hiss of the door, and the lights clicked out.

 

*

 

            “Are you sure you don’t want us to come meet you, Pidge?” Allura asked. On screen, Pidge shook her head.

            “The shopkeeper made it sound like they could move location at any time, so I don’t want to delay. Besides, Shiro and I can handle it.”

            “After spending over a week getting that guy to agree to meet with us, we don’t want to waste this lead,” Shiro added from over Pidge’s shoulder. “As far as Matt knows, there’s no one out here looking for him. He’ll disappear again if we’re not careful.”

            “All right. Keep us updated.”

            “Will do.” The screen clicked to black.

            “If we have a couple quintants of downtime until they get back, maybe I can finally take a look at that backup thruster that’s been offline since Arus,” Coran said, pulling up schematics of the Castle. A dozen red spots lit up across the map, indicating the Castle’s constantly needed repairs. Allura nodded.

            “Good idea, Coran. If Matt can put us in contact with other rebels, perhaps one of them would be able to step in as Blue Paladin.”

            “We should be using this time to look for Lance,” Keith said. He’d said those words so many times over the last month and a half that they had lost all meaning.

            “Do you have a suggestion, Keith?” Allura’s voice was ice cold. It had been almost two weeks since the Blade of Marmora, and she had barely said three words to him. Keith gritted his teeth and stayed silent. At least the Blade had taken Slav back to one of their own bases, so he wasn’t there to interject with morbid statistical predictions about Lance’s probable demise.

            “Hey guys.” Hunk looked up from his computer. “What about cargo manifests?”

            “…What?”

            “Well, that ship that deployed right before Lance disappeared, that wasn’t just a passenger transport, right? It had cargo in it.”

            “Yes?”

            “So, maybe if we can find the Galra’s customs records or whatever, then we can figure out what was on that ship, what they were transporting, and then maybe we can figure out where it was supposed to go?”

            “That information would surely be stored right in the middle of their Empire, though,” Allura said doubtfully. “We’d have no way of getting to it without seriously risking Voltron falling into Zarkon’s hands.”

            “Oh,” Hunk said, drooping. “Right.”

            “We… never figured out what happened to that ship,” Keith said slowly. No one responded, and he looked around the bridge. “Right? The main one, I mean. We went in because we thought there might have been prisoners broadcasting a distress signal. But there weren’t any prisoners. There were dead Galra on board, but we don’t know who killed them.” He swallowed. “But I… might have an idea.”

            “I’m listening,” Allura said. Keith tensed but continued.

            “There was a Galra soldier who didn’t try to fight us. He went down in the maintenance shaft to their ion cannon. I went after him, and I killed him, but…” He swallowed. “I found a blade of Marmora in his boot.” Hunk’s eyes were wide. Keith forged ahead, trying to ignore the roiling feeling in his stomach. “What if the Blade attacked the crew because of whatever cargo was on the ship? What if he was trying to stop it being deployed? Maybe he even… maybe he was going into the cannon shaft to fire at the Galra ships attacking us.”

            “That… would certainly put a different light on things,” Allura said slowly. For the first time in two weeks, she didn’t sound furious at Keith.

            “We should call Kolivan,” Hunk said. “If there was a Blade on that ship, then maybe he knows something about it.” Keith felt like he was standing in quicksand, the ground shifting and sucking beneath him.

            “I’ll have to tell him I killed one of the Blades.” For a moment, he thought he might actually throw up. He swallowed, willing his stomach to settle. “What if it breaks our alliance?”

            “Kolivan is pragmatic,” Coran said gently. “There’s no way you could have known.”

            “I have to think about this,” Allura said.

            “But, Princess—”

            “No, Hunk, we need to be careful. We can’t risk the Blade turning on us, especially when we’re three Paladins down.”

            “The longer we wait, the worse our odds get,” Keith said furiously. “If there really _is_ something so important and dangerous about that cargo that a Blade tried to destroy the ship, then who knows what kind of trouble Lance is in?” Allura looked at him, eyes freezing cold.

            “Well perhaps if you were a little better about controlling that Galra temper of yours, that Blade could have told you what was going on and we would never have lost Lance at all.”

            Keith stepped back as if slapped. He hovered for a moment, lips parted, looking for something to say, but then he abruptly turned and fled.

            Hunk found him later, running session after session with the gladiator until he was seeing double. He stood at the sidelines watching for a long few minutes. Keith glanced once in his direction when he entered, and then ignored him.

            “She doesn’t hate you,” he said eventually.

            “Really?” Keith said, slashing the gladiator across the chest with his bayard. “Because it sure — feels — like — it.”

            “Look, man, cut her some slack. She just found out that someone from the race that murdered her father, killed all her people, and subjugated half the universe has been living on this ship for five months, and she had no idea.”

            Keith slammed the gladiator across the face with the handle of his bayard and it crumpled to the floor. “That’s not my fault though,” he growled. His chest heaved with breath, his dark t-shirt sticking to his chest. “I didn’t _know_!”

            “And she’s gonna realize that, and work through this whole thing. Look, I think she was pretty upset when you ran out. I don’t think she really meant what she said. We’re _all_ under a lot of stress here.” Keith let his bayard retract and sighed. He shoved his bangs up out of his eyes.

            “It’s fine.”

            “No, no it’s not,” Hunk said. “It’s not fair of her to take that stuff out on you. I’m just saying that you need to give her some time to come around.” Keith didn’t respond, picking aimlessly at his gloves. “I also came to tell you that we picked up a distress signal from a nearby planet. Allura wants us to suit up.”

            “We’re going to respond with just the two of us?” Hunk nodded nervously.

            “Uh, yeah, I mean, if there isn’t a Robeast, it should be fine, right? We can handle it.” Keith managed half a smile and crossed the room to clap Hunk on the shoulder.

            “I got your back, buddy,” he said. “Let’s go get ’em.”

 

*

 

            The Uncellian system had a mercifully small outpost of Galra, although it still took some markedly reckless moves on Keith’s part and a lot of air support from the Castle before they managed to take it down. The Uncellians invited them all for a feast of thanks. Keith pleaded exhaustion and stayed behind at the Castle with the mice while Allura, Coran, and Hunk joined the party on the planet. In the quiet, dim lighting of the Castle bridge, he stepped up to the controls and called Kolivan.

            It took a few dobashes before anyone answered, and when they did, it was some other Blade fully masked.

            “Does Voltron require our assistance?” he asked.

            “I need information,” Keith said. There was a note of desperation in his voice that he could not keep out. The Blade did not move. “About a month before we arrived at Blade headquarters, we received a distress call from a Galra ship in Sector N-778. We thought that maybe there were prisoners trying to escape, so we boarded the ship. There weren’t any prisoners on board, but there were a bunch of transport pods that had left the ship. The Blue Paladin must have been on the last one, that deployed while we were fighting. That’s when we lost him.” He swallowed hard. “There was a Galra soldier, on that ship, that had a blade. He d— I killed him. I thought he was trying to shoot down the Castle. I didn’t know.” The Blade still did not move. “I need to know whatever that Blade told you about that ship, where the transports were heading and what was on them.”

            “I will ask,” the Blade said, and the screen went black. Keith sagged against the controls.

            “You’ve done it now, Kogane,” he muttered to himself.

 

*

 

            It was, in all honesty, difficult to tell the difference between drunk Coran and regular Coran, but Keith was pretty sure that this was drunk Coran. Keith understood even less of what he was saying than normal, and his cheek marks were glowing. He swaggered into the room with Hunk behind him, who was red-cheeked and giggling. Keith stood up from his spot on the stairs with raised eyebrows.

            “Looks like you guys had fun,” he deadpanned.

            “Uncellian whiskey, best this side of the Plagarrrrron Star,” Coran trilled.

            “Keith. Keith. You missed out on so much.” Hunk weaved his way over to him, and before Keith could react, he’d grabbed his face between his hands. “They had such good food, Keith. There was some kind of roast that _melted_ on my tongue, and the spices were nothing I’ve ever tasted before.”

            “Uh-huh, glad you had fun, buddy,” Keith said, extricating himself. He frowned, glancing between them. “Where’s Allura?” Hunk waved his arm floppily towards the floor.

            “Still down on the planet. Talking with the Uncellians about forming a, a, a _coalition_.” He giggled. “The Voltron Coalition. Even though we’ve only got an arm and a leg right now.”

            “She suggested we come sober up,” Coran said. He went to lean on one of the control consoles, but missed. “But she’s being ridiculous, I’m as sober as a Dirrigi.” He widened his eyes and leaned towards Keith’s face.

            “How much of that whiskey did you drink?” Keith asked.

            “Oh, three or four glubnus,” Corans said, waving a hand. “I lost count.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a bottle still half-full of dark brown liquid and put a finger to his lips. “I smuggled one out,” he whispered, so loud the lions in their hangars probably heard him. “Don’t — tell — anyone.” He shoved the bottle towards Keith. “Here, try a swallow.”

            “No, thanks.”

            “Come on, you missed all the rest of the fun, have a drink,” Coran insisted, pushing it into his hands. Keith took the bottle and set it down on the steps.

            “Coran, why don’t you go to bed?”

            “Pssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh.” Coran waved a finger barely an inch away from Keith’s nose. “A swallow of Hammeran’s pitloshen and I’ll be reciting the 97th Neoxica treaty like Memalia Kolira.” Keith rubbed a hand across his face.

            “I have no idea what anything you just said means,” he groaned. Behind him, the screen pinged with an incoming message. He jumped, shoved Coran out of the way, and answered. Kolivan’s face filled the screen.

            “Did you get my message?” Keith asked breathlessly

            “I did,” he said. He frowned, looking past Keith, who glanced over his shoulder to see Coran waving enthusiastically and Hunk talking intently to one of the mice who had scampered up on the console. Keith resisted the urge to smack both of them. “Do you have a more specific ID for the ship? Its designation?” Keith felt his stomach sink.

            “No,” he said. “I just know when and where we fought it. I was hoping—”

            “I do!” Coran piped up cheerfully. Keith groaned.

            “Coran, please, just—”

            “I keep a log of all the ship names and numbers that I come across!” Hunk, Kolivan, and Keith all stared at him. “It’s a _hobby_ ,” Coran said. “Where— Hmm—” He patted at his pockets, and then at some parts of his clothes that did not have pockets, and then at the pockets again. “Must be back in my bedroom. Be back in a tick!” He stumbled out of the room. Keith was left to stare awkwardly at Kolivan. Behind him, Hunk cooed to the mice about the dinner he had eaten.

            “Is he drunk?” Kolivan asked after a moment.

            “Yes.”

            Keith dropped his gaze and fidgeted, staring at the floor. There was a long pause. He thought he heard the distant sound of Coran crashing into something.

            “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. He felt Kolivan’s eyes on him, but didn’t dare look up. “About the Blade. I didn’t know he was on our side. I was trying to protect my friends. I would never have— I didn’t mean to—”

            “All Blades know this work comes with certain risks,” Kolivan said evenly. Keith knitted his hands together.

            “Don’t take my mistake out on the rest of Voltron, please,” he said. There was a pause, until finally he glanced up. Kolivan’s face was unreadable.

            “You couldn’t possibly have known,” he said eventually.

            “Alright, I’ve got it!” Coran’s voice rang out behind them. Miraculously, it was clear and even, all the slurring gone, and when Keith turned to look at him, his cheek marks had faded back to normal as well. He was carrying a holopad under one arm. He pulled a small bottle with Altean script on it and shoved it towards Hunk. “Best take a small swallow of that, number one. A _small_ swallow!” he repeated in alarm, as Hunk tilted the bottle back. Hunk tore the bottle away from his mouth and dropped onto the stairs, sticking his head between his knees.

            “ _Ughhhhhh_ ,” he groaned. “Don’t give me a hangover before I’ve even enjoyed being drunk, Coran.” Coran snatched the bottle out of his hand, popped the cap back on, and stuck it back into his pocket.

            “Here we go,” he said, tapping on the holopad. “My grandfather was the architect who built this place, and of course Alfor spent years working on the lions. It was never really my area of expertise, but I got into a habit of taking notes on all the ships I come across. What ship were you looking for, again?”

            “The one where we lost Lance,” Keith said. Hunk’s head lifted up, squinting against the lights, watching. Coran inhaled sharply.

            “Right then,” he said after a moment. He tapped on the screen again and scrolled through a few pages with his finger. “Here we are… it was one of those mid-class transports the Galra have remodeled to function as both suppliers and battleships, probably mostly used in the more hostile areas of their Empire. Not very good at speed and the space needed for transport pods and cargo bays decreases the amount of reinforcement that can be used on the hull, but—”

            “ _Coran_ ,” Hunk and Keith chorused.

            “Right, sorry— Its designation was GVSS 5-088.” He shook his head. “Very inelegant at naming things, the Galra. Castle of Lions has a _much_ better ring to it.”

            “I was afraid that might be it,” Kolivan said. “Illor had missed his last two check-ins.”

            “What was in it? Where were those cargo ships going? What did— What did Illor tell you?” Keith forced himself to say the name, ignoring the bile on his tongue.

            “Unfortunately, not much. All we know was that the cargo it was carrying was somehow related to experiments on prisoners in a distant outpost. We had no idea what it was or how they intended to use it. That’s why Illor made his way on board, but if he found out anything else, he never had a chance to report back.”

            “What’s the outpost?” Keith asked.

            “I’ll send you coordinates.”

            “Thank you, Kolivan,” Keith said, and hastily terminated the video. He leaned on both hands over the controls, struggling for breath. Hunk and Coran were staring at him.

            “Dude, didn’t Allura say not to do that?” Hunk asked.

            “Don’t you want Lance back?” Keith demanded. Hunk took a step back.

            “You know I do.”

            “Then I didn’t have a choice.”

            “Keith—” Coran started.

            “I’m going.”

            “What, are you just going to fly in with Red spewing fire at everyone?” Hunk asked. “You could end up giving her right back to the Galra. Then we’d be down two Paladins _and_ a lion. Come on, man, wait for Pidge to get back so we can sneak in and she can hack the place to bits.”

            “There’s no time!” he shouted. “Kolivan said they were performing experiments on prisoners at this place. What if that’s happening to Lance as well?” He looked up at Hunk, fighting back a burning sensation in his eyes. “Could you forgive yourself if you waited a second longer than you had to?”

            “Keith,” Coran said softly. He laid a hand on Keith’s arm. “Just wait until Allura gets back. We’ll talk about this.” Keith threw his hand off.

            “Allura doesn’t want to hear a word I have to say,” he said. He looked at Hunk. “Do whatever you want. I’m going.”

            “Keith, you can’t.” Hunk looked desperate, all traces of a hangover vanished.

            “Then stop me,” Keith said. He dashed past both of them, paying no attention to them calling after him.

 

*

 

            He took a pod instead of Red, and he wore his Earth clothes instead of his Paladin armor, because Hunk was right that this couldn’t be a _guns blazing_ situation. Unless Lance was actually at the prison, what Keith needed was information. He stuck his Marmora blade into his belt and left his bayard behind. Neither Hunk nor Coran caught up with him before he was blasting off into space, following the coordinates Kolivan had sent them.

            The prison was on a dusty piece of rock that could hardly be called a planet. No one bothered him when he landed the Altean pod well away from the Galra base. The security around the perimeter of the prison also seemed shockingly lax. It took just one press of his palm to the scanner outside a gate around the back — judging by the smell, where they took out the garbage — and one more to the door just beyond it, and he was in. Then again, the prisoners wouldn’t really have anywhere to go if they escaped.

            He crept through the halls of the prison, ducking around corners to keep out of sight of passing drone sentries. He could hear the roar of a crowd somewhere distantly, but the hallways were almost entirely empty — as were all of the cells. Gritting his teeth with frustration, he kept moving, inching closer to the sound, opening doors as he went.

            He almost missed it. He opened yet another cell, and at first he thought it just had a pile of rags on the floor. But then the rags groaned and shifted, and he paused as he saw a long ear flick in his direction.

            “Please,” the pile of rags whimpered. He opened the door wider

            “I’m not here to hurt you,” Keith said cautiously. The alien turned to look over its shoulder, revealing wide white eyes and thin brown fur across its face.

            “Who are you?” it asked.

            “I’m… I’m looking for my friend,” Keith said. “Same species as me but taller, with short brown hair? Have you seen him?” The alien shook its head.

            “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Its eyes flicked past him. “Can you get me out of here?” it asked.

            “Um.” He hadn’t thought about this possibility. “Can I ask one more question first?” The alien’s ears drooped.

            “Okay,” it said.

            “Someone told me there were experiments going on at this prison. Do you— know anything about that?”

            “No. I don’t know. I don’t even know how I got here.” It curled back around itself, tucking its face into its arms. “I can’t remember— I can’t remember anything. I just want to go home.”

            Keith hovered on the threshold. He couldn’t look for Lance or any kind of information with this alien in tow, and he didn’t have an exit strategy. Taking the alien with him would probably just get both of them killed. Still, there could be no reality where leaving this poor creature to rot in a cell was the right decision. Before he could make a choice, though, a drone struck him across the back and sent him sprawling.

            “What are you doing out of your cell? Where did you get those clothes?” it asked. The alien in the cell shivered and huddled closer to the wall. Keith coughed, made a split second decision, and turned to face the drone with fury on his face.

            “I am a _Galra officer_ , how _dare_ you treat me like this.” He did his best at a snarl. The drone stood still.

            “Please provide officer identification number,” it said.

            “Uh.” _Shit_.

            “Please provide officer identification number.”

            “21783,” he spit out desperately.

            “That is not a proper officer identification number,” the drone said. “You will have to come with me.”

            “Okay.” He stood, using one hand behind him to push himself off the floor, and as he got to his feet, snagged his knife. With whip crack speed he slashed the drone across the chest and took off running.

            He skidded down one hallway after another, pushing his way past drones now. He slashed at their heads, leaving them with sparking, open wiring, kicking one of them into another and letting them both short circuit. He didn’t even notice the roar of the crowd getting louder until he nearly crashed into a crowd of people in front of him. The Galra officer had his head turned away at just the right moment, so he dodged and squeezed his way into the mass of prisoners in purple Galra rags, pushing his way forwards. Aside from a weary, confused look or two, they paid him no heed. He made it to the front of the crowd where he broke through and saw the source of the roars.

            This wasn’t just a prison. Remote as it was, this base must be some sort of supply base or transfer point, because in front of Keith was a screaming crowd of Galra spectators, filling an entire stadium. And at ground level, right in front of him, was their sport: the end of a gladiator fight. Green blood spouted from some poor alien prisoner as she was slammed into the ground, her skull shattering.

            “Where the hell did you come from? Weren’t you given proper clothes?” A Galra officer was squinting at him in confusion. Keith could find no excuse, no story sitting pretty at the end of his tongue. He could only stare in terror. Two drones were dragging the green-blooded alien out of the ring. The officer shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, you’ll be dead soon. Get out there.” And the next thing Keith registered, some kind of metal rod was shoved against his back, pushing him forward.

            “No—”

            “Move it!” the Galra soldier pushing at him shouted. It was walk or be shoved over onto his face, so Keith walked.

            “Shiro, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he muttered fervently under his breath. Whatever brutish beast the Galra had dug up for this turned and grinned at him. It carried no weapon, but it looked strong enough to break Keith’s spine over its knee. Its arms were massive, thick as tree trunks and hanging down well past its waist. Two short tusks stuck up over its top lip. Its yellow eyes glowed with delight and bloodlust. If all that weren’t enough, smoke was curling out of the corners of its mouth, and when it roared to the spectators, flames licked around its teeth. This thing could actually _breathe fire_.

            For the first time in his life, Keith wished he knew how to pray.

            He clenched his fist around his knife, white-knuckled. At least the Galra had been too preoccupied to take that away from him, or even notice he had it. They were too eager to see a fight to much care who was in it or what they did. Some distant part of his brain had the thought that this was probably their only entertainment on this dusty, distant rock. He was standing in the center of the gladiator pit before he had really registered what was happening, dirt and blood squelching beneath his feet. The beast was almost within arm’s reach.

            “You look easy to break,” it rumbled at him. Keith gritted his teeth. It rushed him and he dodge out of the way.

            “Don’t be so sure,” he answered. The beast roared and rushed him again. Keith spotted its arm coming up to catch him if he tried to jump sideways again. He slashed out with the knife, and the beast shied away, shrieking indignantly. A thin cut laced its upper arm, dripping brown blood. Keith pressed his advantage, rushing forward. He switched hands at the last second, blindsiding the beast and managing to slash at its leg. Unfortunately, it still managed to get in a glancing blow that knocked him across the pit. He landed hard, coughing, his back still aching from the drone and the metal rod. The crowd’s roaring filled his head.

            He scrambled back to his feet, barely making it before the beast was on him again, and this time he didn’t miss. A fist drove into him, and he heard a _crack_ as blinding pain snapped across his chest. He gasped desperately for air, stabbing out blindly with the knife. The beast was already on him again. He felt it grab his arm. Lightning quick, before it could disarm him, he dropped his knife back into his left hand. He reached around and stabbed the knife straight into the beast’s shoulder. The good news was, the beast let go of him. The bad news was, he didn’t manage to pull the knife back out, and now the beast was extra pissed. It opened its mouth and it roared.

            The jacket probably saved his life. He threw his elbow up to cover the side of his head just barely in time, and the flames broke across the leather. Still, it was too much, too hot, too close, and it wasn’t stopping. The flames buffeted at him, searing, melting, burning. Everything was heat, his entire world was heat, nothing he’d ever felt was anywhere close to the sensation of his jacket catching fire against his skin. The flames licked around his arm and bit into his face, eating away the skin. He could smell someone cooking meat, burning it. Adrenaline raced through his veins faster than lightning. Screaming, he reached out with his free hand and grabbed the hilt of his knife. He would take just one more beast of the Galra Empire down with him if it was the last fucking thing he ever did. He ripped the blade back towards himself, and without pausing drove it straight towards the beast’s face. As the blade pierced its eye, it expanded into a sword. The flames stopped.

            Keith and the beast collapsed side by side. Distantly, he could hear screaming. The flames had stopped except somehow they hadn’t, somehow they were all around, and the crowd was fleeing. A flash of red and silver crossed the sky. Had the stadium always been open to the sky?

            The last thing he saw before it all went dark was something huge and yellow descending towards him.

 

*

 

            Keith sagged forward the moment the glass slid open. He dropped straight into a pair of large, sturdy arms, the sudden warmth jarring after the cool air of the healing pod. “Whoa, there, buddy.” Hunk’s voice was soft in his ear. “I got you.” Keith took a shuddering breath, reaching a hand up to brace himself against Hunk’s arm and push upright. He managed to pull his feet underneath him and stand up properly, though he still trembled and his fingers tightened on Hunk’s arm. Hunk, thankfully, didn’t let go, continuing to support most of his weight.

            “I’m sorry,” he said. He cast his eyes down and away from Hunk’s face. “That was selfish and dangerous and stupid and— I’m sorry.”

            “It’s okay,” Hunk said. “I get it. I might’ve done the same thing, sooner or later. Well, probably not the _same_ thing, because I probably would have fainted the instant I got into that ring, but I would have done something really reckless eventually.” He squeezed Keith’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s get you back into real clothes and get some food in you. I made soup. Do you like soup? I probably should have asked—”

            “If you cooked it, I’m sure it’s delicious,” Keith stopped him. Hunk hummed his thanks, helping Keith over to the elevator. He dropped him off at his room and told him to come to the kitchen when he was ready. The moment he was gone, Keith sank to the floor like a cut marionette. He shivered slightly, a chill seeping through his body. He wrapped his arms around his knees, pulling them close enough to lean against, and stayed like that for a long few minutes. Eventually, without standing, he slowly began to peel off the white healing pod suit. Once he’d stripped down to his boxers, he took a deep breath, climbed back to his feet, and made his way over to his dresser.

            His black cotton t-shirt rubbed gently across his face as he pulled it over his head. He winced back from the fabric instinctively, the memory of pain still ingrained in his reflexes. He brushed his fingertips across his cheek, grimacing at the remembered sensation of the skin searing, burning. The almost supernatural properties of the healing pod had left him with no physical remnant of the trauma, only impossibly smooth skin.

            He looked for his jacket for almost a full minute before he remembered with a start – his jacket had burned, melting into his skin, red threads running like blood. Hunk had probably needed to cut him out of it. He swallowed down his nausea at the memory, squared his shoulders, and walked out.

            The kitchen smelled heavenly when he reached it. He was piss-poor at identifying particular scents, but it smelled inexplicably of _home_. If he’d had a grandmother, someone to come back to on cold winter’s nights who would always be sure he ate, her kitchen would have smelled like this. He breathed deeply, eyes fluttering closed for an instant. Hunk bustled toward him with a bowl, worrying about how he didn’t know what Keith liked, so he just made something like chicken noodle soup, he hoped that was alright. Keith snatched the bowl away – “Hunk, it’s _fine_.” – and dove in.

            With hot broth and thick, floury noodles sitting in his stomach, he started to feel more like himself. Hunk fluttered around the kitchen, cleaning up dishes. Keith finally managed to look up and stop him when he’d devoured a bowl and a half of the soup. “Did the prisoners get out?”

            “Most of them,” Hunk wiped his hands on a towel. “Red went… a little insane there, and things got pretty chaotic. Some of them probably got caught up in all of the fire and shooting and all, but we found the bulk of them huddled in a hallway. We took them to Uncellian, they can get medical treatment and transport home from there. Allura’s still down there too. And Shiro and Pidge are still looking for Matt, last I heard they got his coordinates from one of the other rebels. Just me and you and Coran on the Castle at the moment.” Keith ate another bite of soup. He felt his nose running from the heat and fumbled for a napkin to blow it.

            “Thank you.”

            “It’s all right.”

            “No, it’s not. I wouldn’t have made it out without you. You saved my life. And I’m sorry, again, for putting you and Coran in danger because of me.” Hunk draped the towel across the sink and sat down across from Keith.

            “You don’t have to keep apologizing,” he said. “I get it. I want him back just as badly as you do.” Keith stared into his bowl. “Sorry about your jacket, by the way. It was a lost cause. And, uh, sorry about your hair, too. Apparently the healing pod doesn’t make that grow back. You might want to fix it before the others get back?”

            “My hair?” Keith raised fingers to brush at his head, behind his ear, and felt goosebumps rise up when he met bare skin.

            “Oh, man, you haven’t looked in a mirror yet, have you?” Hunk shifted uneasily. “Um, it’s not, um, it’s not your _best_ look. Um. Yeah. Here—” He followed Keith as he jumped up and strode down the hall to the nearest bathroom, stuttering condolences and reassurances.

            It wasn’t pretty. The pod had repaired all the damage to his skin, so there were no angry burns standing out red and scabbed, but that was about the only positive. Much of the hair on the right side of his head was simply gone, missing in large chunks straight down to the scalp. The little hair that had survived looked singed and brittle, ready to crumble off at any moment. His mullet was as good as gone, reduced to uneven chunks across his neck. While his left side was still largely intact, it still had not escaped getting the ends burns off.

            “Well,” he said, after Hunk babbled himself into silence. “Do you think I can get a space haircut in the space mall?”

            “Maybe. Or, I could help you cut it…?” Keith met Hunk’s eyes in the mirror. “I mean, I’m not super good or anything, but I have an uncle who’s a barber and I went through a phase as a kid…” Keith watched Hunk’s reflection reach over and experimentally fluff up some of his remaining hair, dark fingers tangling in darker strands. “I think there’s enough left on the top of your head to give you an undercut if you want. It’d be a bit more extreme than Shiro’s, but the top part should be a bit, uh, fluffier?” His fingers paused. “Only if you want me to, of course.”

            Keith’s eyes stayed fixed on his reflection for another few seconds before he turned away, towards Hunk. “Yeah,” he said, trying to speak a confidence he did not feel. “Let’s do it.”

            “Right now?” Hunk squeaked.

            “I’m not walking around looking like this,” he answered firmly. “I’m sure there are clippers in this castle somewhere.”

            “Okay, let me just— um…”

            In the end, it took them about half an hour to unearth a pair of scissors and electric clippers, both stolen from Coran’s extensive mustache care station. Keith found a stool in a storage closet and dragged it back to the bathroom. He wrapped a towel around his shoulders and plopped down on the stool, facing away from the mirror.

            “Uh… are you sure?” Hunk asked, his eyes darting between Keith and the mirror.

            “Just get it over with,” Keith said tersely, crossing his arms. Hunk took a deep breath.

            “Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay. Just… don’t move, okay?” He moved behind Keith, and a moment later Keith felt his hands on the back of his head. His touch was hesitant, but steady and infinitely gently. After a minute or so of near-inaudible muttering, Keith heard the _snip-snip_ of scissors. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw clumps of ruined black hair dropping silently to the floor.

            They stayed quiet as Hunk carefully cut away the singed hair. Keith slowly felt his breathing even out and his pulse beat less painfully in his throat. The quiet buzz as Hunk shaved the sides and back of his head down to a thin fuzz was oddly soothing. His fingers roamed over Keith’s head with reassuring warmth. He relaxed so much into the silence and touch that it startled him when the clippers turned off and Hunk’s hands disappeared from his head.

            “Please don’t hate me if it looks horrible,” Hunk begged. Keith turned to see him covering his eyes before he looked in the mirror. “It’s still a little patchy,” Hunk said. “But since the pod healed all your skin, I’m hoping it should start growing back pretty quickly. I can buzz it again in a week or two so that it all grows back evenly.”

            Keith examined his reflection. A few shiny patches of bare skin still stood out on the right side of his head, but the rest of it had been shaved down to a thin black fuzz. A thick stripe of longer hair remained at the top and center, stopping in the back just where his skull began to slope down. He ran a hesitant hand across the back of his head. The aggressively short hair felt bizarre. He looked over at Hunk, who was watching him in between his fingers, and gave him a lopsided grin.

            “It’ll definitely take some getting used to,” he said. “But it looks great.” Abruptly, he leaned forward, still on the stool, and wrapped his arms around Hunk. “Thank you,” he mumbled, his voice muffled by Hunk’s stomach. Hunk patted him on the back.

            “Anytime, Keith,” he said. Keith squeezed his eyes shut. If he was blinking back tears, he could always just say he got a stray bit of hair in his eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Archive Warning: Major Character Death: Keith's mullet
> 
> As always, please leave comments!!!! ...and hopefully you all don't hate me now lol


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aliiiiiiiiiiive
> 
> I am SO SORRY about how long it's taken to post this chapter; work and mental health ate my life for a while and I really didn't want to try and get this chapter out faster at the expense of doing a shoddy job. This fic is too important to me for that. Plus, this chapter ended up being an absolute monster to write. Remind me never to write this much of Keith's POV at once again.
> 
> But IT'S HERE and I really hope you enjoy it!!!!!!!

### ONE MONTH AGO

            “…can’t be everywhere at once,” Allura was saying. Keith blinked and shook his head, coming back to the present. He shook his head again and ran an absent hand across his neck, severely short and even fuzz greeting his fingers. Two weeks, and his head still felt loose on top of his neck, like it could move too fast and too freely and might simply fall off if he turned it too quickly. Allura was looking sideways at him. He swallowed, dropped his hand, and sat up straight.

            “The Blade is relatively small, but well organized,” Shiro said, from Allura’s other side. “They’re the most likely to hear news of impending attacks in advance, and the least likely to be tracked or detected. That means they’re in the best position to serve as an alert system for the rest of us. They can call in the needed reinforcements if the Galra attack, without us having to spend all of our time and energy constantly monitoring every planet in the universe. It’s better than just a generic distress call, because this way we have an idea whether they need a handful of rebel ships or Voltron and a fleet.” The aliens across the table still glared skeptically at them.

            “Why should we trust _any_ Galra?” the tall one with sheer green skin asked. Allura rested a careful hand on Keith’s shoulder and he did his best not to flinch.

            “I know better than anyone how hard it is to trust the Galra,” she said. Keith focused on breathing evenly, ignoring how much venom still laced her voice. “But the Blade have shown themselves to be our allies. Keith has discovered he himself is, in fact, part Galra, and has been working closely with the Blade on our behalf. We should not pass judgement on anyone simply because of who they were born.” Only a half-breath of a pause before the last sentence showed her hesitancy.

            Matt Holt leaned forward from his seat to the side, splaying a hand out on the table. “I’ve met a handful of them since I got to the Castle,” he said. “They’ve been nothing but helpful. Standoffish, maybe, but helpful. If they wanted to strike a blow against Voltron and the rebels, they should’ve shown their hand by now.”

            “Unless they’re just biding their time,” the other rebel said.

            “Olia—”

            “I’m sorry, Matt, but we can’t risk it,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll trust him,” she pointed to Keith, “because he’s a member of Voltron. Plus, he didn’t even _know_ he was part Galra. But letting these defectors have access to our intel, know who our operatives are and where they’re stationed – we don’t have any guarantee it’s not a ploy.”

            “Captain Olia,” Shiro said. He was leaning on the table on his left arm, the Galra one down and mostly out of sight. “At least agree to _meet_ with one of them. The only reason you have Voltron at all is because a Blade named Ulaz freed me from captivity, and later sacrificed himself to save all of us.”

            “About that,” Olia said. “ _Voltron_ hasn’t been seen in over two months. Matt told me that one of the Paladins is missing.” Allura’s fingers, still on Keith’s shoulder, tightened to the point of painful.

            “We are doing everything we can to find him,” she said. Olia and the other rebel exchanged a glance.

            “And if you can’t?” the green one asked.

            “We _will_ ,” Shiro said.

            “But who knows how long it will take? You need a new Paladin, and fast. From the little intel we’ve managed to gather, it sounds like Zarkon is working on something that could take Voltron down. If you might not beat it as Voltron, you certainly can’t beat it as four separate lions,” Olia said. “There has to be a way for someone to at least fill in.”

            “The lions choose their Paladins,” Allura said shortly. “We can’t guarantee that Blue would let anyone else pilot her while Lance is still alive.”

            “At least let us _try_ ,” Olia said. “There are some extraordinary pilots in the resistance, Princess Allura. I have to believe at least _one_ of them would be worthy of being the new Blue Paladin.” Allura was silent for a long moment. Then she abruptly released Keith’s shoulder and some of her hard edges seemed to melt away.

            “Send us a handful and we will see if Blue will let any of them in,” she said. There was a note of resignation in her voice that made Keith glance up at her in surprise. She sat back down next to him as he realized one of his fists had been clenched so tight his fingernails had bitten into his palm and drawn spots of blood. He forced himself to relax the hand, knuckles cracking and shifting as he did.

            “Captain Olia, why don’t you come to the Castle and meet Kolivan while you’re there with the potential Paladins?” Shiro asked. “You don’t have to commit to anything yet. Just talk to him.” Olia looked at her companion and they held a brief, silent conversation.

            “Alright,” she said. “At least I’ll get a chance to judge what he’s like in person.” Keith felt Allura and Shiro relax beside him.

            “They won’t let you down,” Shiro promised fervently. “They’ve had a setback, recently, when they lost one of their operatives in high command, but they’re already putting backup plans into motion.”

            “With Voltron back and all of us working together, we’ll be closer than we’ve ever been to taking down Zarkon,” Allura said. “Even the Galra Empire can’t stand against the entire universe.” The green-skinned alien drummed their fingers skeptically on the table, the two antennae hanging over their forehead twitching with nerves. Olia sat forward.

            “The rebel fleet is beyond grateful for your help with the cause, Princess Allura,” she said. “When we heard the first reports of Voltron, it seemed too good to be true. If you’re so certain that the Blade are trustworthy allies, then the least we can do is give them the benefit of the doubt. We need all the help we can get to take down Zarkon.”

            “Thank you,” Allura said. “Believe me when I say I truly do understand how hard it is to trust them. But we cannot afford to dismiss any allies that we have, and we certainly cannot risk working at cross-purposes with them.” Olia was nodding.

            “Give me a few quintants to gather some pilot candidates for you, and I’ll come meet with the Blades then.”

            “Excellent,” Allura said. “Matt’s given you communicators to contact the Castle?”

            “He has. When are you going to give him back, huh?” Olia nudged Matt in the ribs. “I’ve never met someone as intuitive with computers and AI as him, and his planet hasn’t even invented lightspeed travel yet.” Allura let a smile break the tension of her face.

            “You’ll have to ask his sister,” she said. “I doubt she’ll let him leave before she’s beaten him in their video game.”

            “Katie doesn’t have a prayer,” Matt laughed, lounging back in his chair, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “Don’t worry, Olia, you know I’ll be in shouting distance if you need me.” Olia and the green-skinned rebel pushed back from the table, getting to their feet, as Allura and Shiro did the same.

            “Thank you for keeping the fight alive all this time,” Allura said, fervor back in her voice. Olia waved her off.

            “We do what we can,” she said. “I know it must seem like a shock to you, waking up to find their Empire so massive, but there’s not an inch of it we haven’t made them pay dearly for. It’s been a losing battle, but with Voltron back we’re finally beginning to turn things around.” They shook hands across the table. Matt unfolded himself from his chair and gave Olia a quick side-hug.

            “It’s good to see you,” he said. “When I heard about that raid on Hallinax, I thought—”

            “C’mon, Matt, you can’t think I’d go down that easy,” Olia said, her grin appropriately wolfish. Matt snorted.

            “Well serves you right for making me fake my own death and hide out in that bunker. Zarkon could’ve died and it would’ve taken me a week to find out about it.” A shadow passed over Olia’s face, her expression drooping.

            “We still don’t know who sent that bounty hunter after you,” she said. “Be careful, yeah?”

            “I’m on a spaceship with an ancient warrior princess, my sister, and the most powerful weapon in the entire universe. I _think_ I’ll be okay.”

            “Not quite all of the greatest weapon,” Olia said. Keith felt his jaw twinge in pain at how tightly he was clenching it and forced himself to relax slightly, stop his teeth grinding against each other. He glanced up at Allura, and she gave him a small nod. With a sigh of relief he jumped up from the table and strode out of the room. There was still no warmth in her gaze as her eyes followed him, but at least she didn’t look at him like a cockroach anymore.

            The Creleot System had a cluster of six inhabited planets with almost a millennium of history of travel between them. From what Keith had gathered, after a rough few years right at the start, they’d managed a remarkably peaceful coexistence. Passenger transports and trade ships between them left practically every hour, they’d developed cooperative policies designed to distribute their resources evenly between all six planets, and they presented a united front to the rest of the universe. The Galra had begun battering at their defenses a few decades ago, but the Crells had held out. With no other inhabitable planets nearby and all six of them willing to defend each other, it was a war of attrition highly unfavorable to the Galra. They were still at it, and the Crells had won some battles by the skin of their teeth, but they’d reached out to the rebels in the interim. It was a trade-off: if the rebels helped them beat back the Galra when they launched new attacks, the Crells were happy to provide ships, weapons, medical supplies, and whatever else they could to the cause. There was no real single rebel base, but the Creleot system was one of their preferred safe zones.

            You would hardly have known there was a war going on here, Keith reflected. This planet, Martara, was close to the center of the cluster and by far the most populous and urban. The capital city rose around him in a shimmering opaque material that looked like frosted glass or maybe white opal but wasn’t either. Transports – both the domestic and interplanetary kind – sailed overhead. The domestic ones had actual sails, composed of ultra-flexible solar panels that shifted and adjusted like sunflowers, hunting out the light. A dozen alien races walked down the street, going about their day – lovers arm-in-arm, parents with children, people carrying shopping bags, a young group of aliens shooting past Keith on hoverboards, scaling twenty vertical feet up the wall of a building, freefalling a dozen feet back towards the ground before letting the board catch them. Laughter and chatter filled his ears, as carefree as Saturday in the rec room of the Garrison. A few of them gave him sideways glances, frowns knitting their foreheads at his unfamiliar shape, but most didn’t seem to give him a second thought. He wasn’t wearing his Paladin armor; there was nothing to draw attention to him. His knife was stuck in the back of his belt, but he’d rewrapped the handle, hiding the damning symbol on the hilt. The breeze was cool against his bare arms. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to replace his jacket yet.

            The endless meetings – with the planets that made up the tentative Voltron Coalition, with the Blade, with the rebels – were stifling, not least because Keith always had to be present and rarely spoke. Out here, though, with the laughter of children in his ears, it was hard to feel the urgency of the war. The itch of terror and fury dissipated under his skin. His need to find Lance had not lessened. Silence and guilt still roared in his ears when he tried to sleep. The flailing desperation that accompanied it, however, had settled somewhat, burned out of him, or perhaps cut away along with his ruined hair. It had been replaced with purpose, heavy but stable. He walked into a shop and bought something that looked like a smoothie. He stood at a counter sipping it, watching aliens pass by in the street, able to exist, to breathe, to stay still without drowning.

            “I recommend adding a dash of sillanon,” a voice said behind him. Keith jumped and turned, nearly spilling the smoothie down his front, to find an alien lounging against the counter behind him. The alien was remarkably humanoid, with two legs and two arms, two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth all in the expected places, although he did have an extra finger on each hand. His skin shimmered, true black or perhaps infinitely deep navy blue, almost reflective, like onyx. Tightly curled, wiry hair fell to his shoulders. He was slightly shorter than Keith, lithe and muscled. A pair of light grey pants cinched his waist and ended mid-calf, but his feet and torso were bare. His eyes stood out almost shockingly against his dark skin, a thin ring of white encircling brilliant green encircling a dark pupil. He grinned, and his teeth glimmered unnaturally silver to Keith’s eyes.

            “What?” he stammered. The alien pointed to an array of spices at the end of the counter.

            “Sillanon,” he said. “Brings out the flavor, gives it just the slightest bite.” Keith held up his half-empty glass and shrugged.

            “I’ll keep it in mind for next time I guess,” he lied, and started to turn away.

            “Whereabouts are you from?” the alien asked. Keith dragged absentminded fingers along the side of his glass.

            “I’m… a bit nomadic at the moment,” he said. The alien nodded.

            “I like it,” he said. “Gotta be dangerous, these days, though, right?” Keith shrugged.

            “I’m dangerous too,” he said, and then froze. “Not like— I didn’t mean that as a threat, I’m so sorry.” The alien laughed.

            “No offense taken,” he said. He tilted his head, considering Keith. “My name’s Zay,” he said.

            “Uh. Keith.”

            “Nice to meet you, uh-Keith,” he teased. “How long are you in Creleot?” Keith shrugged.

            “Depends,” he said. Zay didn’t have eyebrows, but his eyes widened in a way that seemed to indicate interest.

            “Would a… personal tour tempt you to stay longer?” he asked.

            “Oh,” Keith said, catching up to the situation. He felt embarrassed heat climbing his neck. “Um. No. Thanks, no.” Zay raised an arm and twisted his wrist. Keith thought maybe it was his way of shrugging.

            “ _Hilocken fen karusha_ ,” he said. Keith blinked.

            “The… translator didn’t quite catch that one,” he said.

            “It never does,” Zay laughed. “It’s a saying in my native tongue. It means something like… things are as they are meant to be. We don’t leave it for the universe to make meaning for us, but my people believe there is a way to find value even in what seems negative or pointless.”

            “That’s cool,” Keith said, and regretted the words the instant they were out of his mouth. “I’m sorry I’m— I’m just going to go, now.”

            “It was a pleasure to meet you, uh-Keith the nomad.” Zay raised his own glass as if toasting him. “Until next time.”

            “Sure,” he muttered, squeezing past aliens to get to the door. He felt like Zay somehow continued to watch him all the way down the street.

*

            If he closed his eyes, he could imagine he was five years old again. The smells and sounds of Kaltenecker’s simulation bay brought back a flood fragmented images. His memories of the remote farm where he and his father had lived were fuzzy; he wasn’t even sure that it had been _their_ farm. He had some vague notion his father had rented a room for the two of them in someone else’s house, in exchange for work. There were passing impressions of a grizzled man who had been unfriendly, but not unkind, and a big living room that Keith stared at wide-eyed from the doorway because he wasn’t supposed to go inside with his dusty boots. His memories of the shack in the desert had always been much sharper. They hadn’t gone often — it was a long drive, one that always made Keith fall asleep, and they could rarely get away from the farm for more than a day or so. Still, when they got a chance, his dad had driven them out there. They’d always left the car at a garage in town and hiked out into the desert, usually in the twilight, when the air was cool. He’d taken them out into the desert with a telescope and shown Keith the stars. He’d cooked them dinner, singing off-key and telling Keith wild tales about aliens and space pirates. The farm was fine, but the shack was their happy place, their place to be together. Until it wasn’t.

            Keith yanked himself away from the memories and sat up to study Kaltenecker, chewing sedately on Creleot System’s version of grass. “We should leave you behind on one of the planets here,” he said, running a critical eye over her. “You seem happy enough to graze on that, and then I don’t have to worry if you’re getting tossed around every time we get into a fight. Plus you probably miss real sunshine.” He wrinkled his nose. “And if we’re not careful, you’ll start stinking up more than just this room.” No matter how industrious the cleaning bots were, they couldn’t seem to quite erase the pungent odor of manure. Or maybe cows just smelled like that.

            “I thought you weren’t going to take care of her.” Keith jumped so badly he banged the back of his head against the wall. He leaned forward, groaning and rubbing at the sore spot, his fingers still surprised to find fuzz rather than his mullet. Shiro gave him an apologetic smile. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

            “Don’t creep up on me like that,” he growled.

            “Are you the one who brought her actual grass?” Shiro sounded admiring. “I almost think you like looking after this cow, Keith.”

            “I just— Eating food goo probably isn’t the best thing for her, and I was bored, so I— We should just leave her behind here, she’s not worth the trouble. What are _you_ doing here, anyway?”

            “Looking for you.” Keith’s shoulders caved in on his torso as he drew back towards the wall. “Keith. Come on.”

            “I’m fine,” he said.

            “You’ve barely said three words to me or anyone else in two weeks. We need to talk about what happened.”

            “Hunk and Coran told you everything,” he mumbled. Shiro crossed his arms.

            “So you think that gets you out of explaining yourself?”

            “What is there to explain?” His fingers clutched for the security of a jacket that wasn’t there, pulling on his skin. “I was stupid and reckless and scared. And I’m sorry. And I won’t do it again.”

            “First being Galra, and now this. Keith, you need to learn to talk about what’s going on with you. At least to me. Come on, you’ve always talked to me.” Keith said nothing, just pulled his knees up to his chest, curling further in on himself. “Are you just going to hide out with a cow forever? Just having you turn up when there’s a fight or a meeting isn’t enough. We need you as part of the team.”

            “We don’t _have_ a team right now, Shiro. That’s kind of the point.”

            “We’re _all_ upset about Lance, but we can’t keep talking in circles. And you need to pull yourself together if you don’t want to almost get killed again, or put one of _us_ in danger. Again.” Unthinking, Keith glanced toward the ceiling. Olia had probably arrived with her candidates for Blue Paladin by now. She’d sent Allura a message this morning that she was on her way. He pulled his gaze back down to face Shiro. A moment of silence hung between them, charged and painful.

            “It was my _fault_ , Shiro,” he said. “I’m the one that left him behind. He didn’t want to split up, and I ran off and left him behind. If we don’t find him—” He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against his knees. “If we don’t find him, I’m the one who lives with that.”

            “The Galra—”

            “Yes, the Galra took him, but it was _my_ job to have his back,” he said fiercely. “I thought I had a way to fix it, so I ran off and went headfirst into a Galra prison, where I nearly had my face burned off. I learned my lesson. I know I can’t fix this on my own. So whatever you guys decide to do, build up the Voltron Coalition, get the rebels to talk to the Blade, even find a new Blue Paladin, I am here. I’m on board. I’ll fly Red and work with the team and try not to be impatient about finding Lance because I know, I _know_ , that we’re doing everything we can. But please, do not ask me to just pretend like everything’s okay, because at the end of the day, if we can’t find him, then that’s on me, and I am never going to forgive myself.”

            He hadn’t looked up the entire speech, staring fixedly at his kneecaps. He kept his gaze forward as he waited through an agony of silence for Shiro to respond, and flinched so hard he almost toppled over when Shiro was suddenly beside him, sliding down the wall to sit next to him.

            “When I attacked Matt to keep him out of the ring, it kept me up for days. I still don’t remember much, but I remember that. I was so worried – what if I’d made the wrong decision? What if they’d just taken him away to kill him, if he couldn’t fight? For a while, I wasn’t even scared of the ring. I didn’t have nightmares about the things I had to fight or… Not until later. It was just about Matt. I can’t imagine what Commander Holt must have felt – what he must _still_ feel, not knowing what happened to us.” Kaltenecker shuffled over to the water trough, and Shiro was silent for a moment as the sound of sloshing water filled the space. “You’re not the only one who feels guilty about Lance’s disappearance,” he said quietly. “And you don’t have to feel better about it anytime soon. But you can’t blame—” A roar so loud it shook the ship interrupted him. Shiro broke off as he and Keith both jerked their heads up to the ceiling.

            “Was that—”

            There was another roar, following by something crashing that made the entire Castle list sideways for a moment. Water splashed over the edge of the trough, hitting Kaltenecker in the face and she backed away, lowing angrily. Keith and Shiro scrambled to their feet. Keith was already sprinting, tripping over himself, running for the door, as roars continued to shake the ship. Shiro was calling after him, but he couldn’t understand what he was saying, or didn’t want to. He pummeled the button for the elevator, and leaped in. Shiro barely made it in with him before the door closed. They sprinted from the elevator for Blue’s hangar, Keith outpacing Shiro again. The roaring grew so loud it was all he could do not to cover his ears.

            She was clawing at the walls, her claws leaving massive gashes, eyes yellow and burning. A group of aliens cowered behind Allura, who was braced against the back corner of the room. Pidge, Hunk, and Coran arrived seconds after Keith and Shiro, staring slack-jawed as Blue bashed herself against the wall. Alarms blared in the castle, barely audible as she roared again, loud enough to deafen them all. She opened her mouth, and Keith saw white laser fire gathering.

            “ _Let her out_!” Keith shouted, barely able to hear himself over the roaring and the alarms. “She’s going to— _let her outletheroutletherout_ —” Coran stumbled to the control panel, and smashed the button to open the hangar. Blue’s blast just barely missed tearing open a hole in the Castle. She sped out, still roaring. The whole crowd of them dashed after her, watching as she shot off. Shiro opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, she came back into view and flew past them again. She stopped, roared into space, seeming to hang uncertainly, and did another circuit of the Castle. She shot off in one direction only to return just as quickly, clawing at the air in frustration.

            “What is she doing?” Hunk asked. “What’s happening? What does she want?”

            “I… don’t know,” Allura said faintly.  “She was unresponsive, wouldn’t let anyone in, and then just out of nowhere…”

            “Coran?” Hunk asked tentatively. “Have you… ever seen a lion do that before?” Coran shook his head, his mustache trembling.

            “Normally, I’d say her Paladin was in danger, but…” Keith’s fingernails bit into his palms and his mouth went dry.

            “Do you think—?” Coran shook his head.

            “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. Even he sounded shaken, his voice slightly unsteady. “If she was close enough to find him, then why hasn’t she gone to him? And if he isn’t close enough, then why the sudden outburst _now_?” Keith felt sick to his stomach.

            “Because he wasn’t in danger before,” he said. “Something must have changed. She knows he’s in danger but we’re still too far away.” Blue roared again, and this time it sounded anguished. “Can’t you _do something?_ ” he demanded. Allura raised her hands helplessly.

            “What do you want me to do?” she asked. Keith shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. She turned to the rebel pilots, who looked petrified. “We’ll… try this again later,” she said, grasping for her composure. “Thank you for your time.” The rebels nodded, one and all of them wide-eyed with fear. One had sprung up defensive spikes all across their shoulders that they didn’t look like they had any intention of retracting. Allura led them out of the room.

            “Are Olia and Kolivan still talking?” Coran asked.

            “Matt said they were wrapping things up,” Pidge said. “I’ll… go get them.” She backed out of the room slowly.

            “What do we do?” Hunk asked. Blue was still flying circles around the Castle, her roars less frequent now.

            “I don’t think there’s much we can do that we aren’t already doing,” Shiro said. “Hunk, Keith, can you keep an eye on Blue? Coran and I should go make sure Olia and Kolivan haven’t tried to murder each other.” Keith nodded, not sure he could have spoken if he even wanted to. Shiro threw him one backward glance as he and Coran left the room. Hunk was trembling, grasping at the wall for support. Keith stood silent a moment longer, but when Blue showed no indication of doing anything different, he slid down to the floor and sat with his back against the wall. He leaned his head back, trying to breathe quietly. Hunk glanced sideways at him.

            “How can you possibly be that relaxed?” he asked, a note a hysteria in his voice. Keith looked up at him skeptically.

            “Trust me, it’s taking most of my willpower not to run and jump into Red’s cockpit right now. But what would I do once I got there?” He sighed. “This is me trying my best _not_ to be impulsive. You fished me out of the fire once already.” Blue roared again and he turned his face away from the hangar door. “Come on, Lance. Whatever it is, fight it off. You can do it,” he muttered. “Please be safe.” He repeated it like a prayer.

*

            It took almost twenty minutes for Blue to finally calm down and come back to the hangar. As she did, Keith and Hunk had exchanged a glance and silently agreed that Lance must have gotten himself out of whatever immediate danger he was in. Keith didn’t want to hear about any different explanation. There was no other explanation. Lance was safe. Lance was fine. Lance _would be_ fine.

            Still, neither of them were surprised to see each other down there the next day, with no particular reason or task to attend to. Hunk was tinkering on some small piece of machinery Keith didn’t recognize. Keith made no pretense at being busy, just plopped himself down on the ground and folded his arms, glaring at Blue. Pidge came down half a varga later, toting her computer under her arm, glanced between the two of them, and sat down next to Hunk. She snapped open her computer and started typing, the falter in her rhythm audible whenever her eyes strayed to Blue.

            The three of them sat in silence for a long while. Allura, Shiro, Matt, and Kolivan were all planetside, having further discussions on plans to distribute Blades and rebels around the universe to help defend the Voltron Coalition. At least Olia and Kolivan’s talk had been less disastrous than the attempt to find Blue a new pilot.

            “What was it like, when you saw him?” Pidge asked suddenly. Keith started, taking a moment to realize the question had been aimed at him. He shrugged uncomfortably.

            “Pretty indistinct. I got one really clear flash of his face but everything else was kind of… misty. I mean, I was also sort of bleeding out and I’m pretty sure I had at least one broken rib so I was pretty foggy in the head even without a mystical lion poking around in it.” Pidge nodded, gnawing her lip.

            “I wonder if there’s a way for us to connect even when we’re not _in_ our lions,” she said. “I mean, if Blue managed to telepathically reach Lance, even just for a millisecond, across who knows how many galaxies, it seems like as long as we’re decently close to our lions, we should be able to connect with each other.”

            “You mean the way we did when we were looking in each other’s head holes?”

            “Yeah, but that was with the help of Altean technology,” Pidge said. “And when we’re in the lions, it’s a similar thing, right? So I wonder if we can do it _outside_ the lions. Still using them for the connection, but we don’t necessarily have to be piloting them at the time.”

            “Are you saying we could all become, like, mind linked?” Keith asked warily. Pidge shrugged.

            “I mean, it’s probably not the best idea for us to try and do it _all the time_. It’s exhausting enough when we’re actually forming Voltron, it must require a lot of energy _outside_ of Voltron. But it could be useful…” Her eyes strayed sideways to Blue before snapping back. “…in the future.”

            Keith opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Blue’s eyes suddenly illuminated and she sat up and roared again. She was halfway off the floor before Keith could rise to his feet and she roared again, louder, practically knocking him backward with the force of the sound. Her claws lashed at the already damaged hangar wall. Keith pressed a hand to his temple. There seemed to be a high-pitched ringing in his head, a piercing, uncomfortable sound. Pidge and Hunk were doing the same, eyes squinted and lips curled in pain. Blue _screeched_ , skating metal adding to the piercing noise, and she bashed her head against the wall. Metal reverberated as the Castle wall bowed with the effort of staying together. Alarms blared, and red light washed over them all. She reared back again.

            “Stop her!” Hunk screamed. “She’s going to tear the hangar apart!” The three of them rushed forward, no actual plan in mind. Hunk, closest to her, reached Blue first, but the second his outstretched hand touched her foot a pulse of energy blew him backward.

            “Hunk!” Pidge shouted, veering off course. Keith stumbled back, thrown off balance as Blue’s head collided with the wall again. He heard the Castle groaning and practically fell on top of the control panel trying to get it open. As soon as his hand found the button, though, she suddenly stopped, eyes going out as she settled back onto the floor, the wall torn and bent behind her. The ringing stopped. After a moment her barrier went back up. Cold air from the open hangar door whipped across them in sudden silence. Hunk sat up, groaning quietly.

            “What. Was that,” Pidge asked flatly.

            “Nothing good,” Keith said. “Hunk, are you okay?”

            “I think my life just actually flashed before my eyes,” Hunk said. “I saw the cave where we found her and thought of all the ways I could have died peacefully on Earth, absolutely not including being exposed to the vacuum of space by a crazed mystical robot lion.” He looked up at Blue, sweat trickling down his cheek. “Um. No offense.” Blue sat quiet, as if there had been no outburst.

            “You guys both heard something _ringing_ , right? Not like a bell ringing, like your ears after you’ve spent too long at a loud concert ringing.” Keith and Hunk both nodded. Hunk glanced upward.

            “I wonder if Shiro heard it too. Or Coran.”

            “We… probably shouldn’t be in here anymore,” Pidge said, suddenly sounding nervous. She gathered her computer into her arms. “What if something else sets her off? The walls probably can’t take much more abuse.”

            “I’ll leave the door open,” Keith said. Hunk nodded vigorously.

            “Good idea.”

            “We should go tell Allura and Coran what just happened,” Pidge said, still edging toward the door.

            “Right behind you,” Hunk agreed.

            Keith paused a moment in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder at Blue. He took a breath, as if to speak, but instead he simply followed Hunk and Pidge upstairs.

*

            The next few days went quietly. Shiro reported that he thought he’d heard a faint ringing, but nothing like what Keith, Hunk, and Pidge had experienced. Their meeting had continued uninterrupted; they hadn’t had any idea Blue had freaked out again until they got back to the Castle. Coran had met them halfway back from the hangar, rushing there in response the alarms. He shook his head in dismay at the hangar wall. They’d probably have to go to Olkarion to get it fixed, but they didn’t have time at the moment. They left the door open, hoping Blue would simply fly out if she needed to, but she was silent and unresponsive once again. They walked a razor’s edge of nerves: if she tried to get out again, Lance must be in danger. If she _didn’t_ , though, who could say what was happening to him? Keith did not like to think of how abruptly she’d gone silent the second time, sinking to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

            Clumsily, they tried to fit their team back together. Allura kept them on a merciless schedule of responding to distress calls, convincing planets to join the coalition, and making a general show of force. Voltron had to be the mediator between the coalition, the rebels, and the Blades. They were the only common denominator that people trusted — and the longer they went without anyone actually seeing Voltron, the harder it got to sell that point. Still, they were no longer drifting, living in broken time with little idea when they last slept, wandering about the Castle glimpsing the others like ghosts. Their schedules aligned more tightly now, with a bare few vargas in the day left to themselves. One night, exhausted down to his bones after a particularly nasty fight with a small Galra fleet, immediately followed by a diplomatic mediation when the closest planet accused the rebels of retreating to save their own skins, Keith stumbled to his room and collapsed face down on his bed, asleep the moment he was horizontal. It was only when he woke, four hours later, his shirt stiff with dried sweat and shoes heavy on his feet, that he realized it was the first time in over a month that he hadn’t retreated to Lance’s room to sleep. He stripped his dirty clothes, took a shower, and went straight to the training deck, unwilling to confront the twinge in his chest at that realization.

            On a rare quiet evening, Pidge, Hunk, and Matt were busy playing Killbot, and Shiro and Allura had both been persuaded to get a few extra hours of sleep for once. Keith found himself on the Castle bridge, watching the stars where they hung in the sky. Once upon a time, he’d returned to the stars as a constant. He might live under a new roof every six months but the night sky was always the same. Losing that particular piece of security hadn’t bothered him as much as he might have thought it would, if he’d had any warning what was about to happen. The trade-off was too massive. Still, it threw him off sometimes to look out the window and be reminded he didn’t know these stars. They did not belong to him. These stars were strange creatures, with alien names and secret histories, and he was the first human being to ever see them.

            Coran found him there, as he whistled his way through Castle maintenance. He nodded to Keith, sprawled out in his chair, and turned to pull up schematics. He examined the myriad of alerts in silence for a few minutes, zooming in on this one or that one to see the details. Keith watched him quietly.

            “I never properly said thank you,” he burst out. Coran paused, turning to look at him over his shoulder.

            “What was that, number four?” Keith sat upright, rubbing uncomfortably at his neck.

            “I… never properly said thank you. For saving my life,” he said, indicating his undercut. “You were busy when I woke up, and then Allura got back and she…” He winced. “She yelled at me, and then Pidge and Shiro turned back up with Matt and there was just never a moment, I guess. So thank you. And I’m sorry.” Coran shrugged.

            “No need to worry yourself about it,” he said cheerfully. “That’s quite a remarkable bond you have with your lion. She could probably have rescued you all on her own.”

            “Yeah,” Keith mumbled, sliding back down in his chair again. There were another few moments of silence. Coran tapped at Altean symbols as oblique in meaning to Keith as they had been the day he arrived. “Do you think she’ll find him?” he blurted out. Coran paused a moment, and then closed the schematics, letting the hologram go dark. He leaned forward, bracing himself on the control panel.

            “Being a Paladin doesn’t make you invincible,” he said. “I know that all too well. But Lance is resourceful, and he clearly has a strong bond with his lion. I have to believe that we’ll find him.” He turned, and there was a surprisingly gentle expression on his face. “Don’t give up hope. He’s probably just stuck on a planet that’s barely invented space travel befriending the local aliens. When we finally find him, he’ll probably just be annoyed we took so long.” Keith attempted a smile, but it slid away as he sank back into pondering. He fiddled with his fingers, his thumbs drawing errant circles against each other.

            “Why do you think she can’t find him now, if she knows when he’s in danger?” he asked. Coran shook his head, mustache quivering.

            “She probably knows where he is, generally speaking. But the lions are too smart to just speed off in a given direction. She must know that even as fast as a lion of Voltron can fly, it would take her months or years to reach him from where we are.” Keith nodded slightly, staring down at his hands for a long moment. Coran turned back and pulled up the Castle schematics again.

            “Coran,” he said eventually. Coran hummed to show he was listening, glancing slightly over his shoulder. “When we first came here, a wormhole opened up out of nowhere that took us straight to the Castle. You and Allura were both still in cryosleep at that time, so who opened that portal?” Coran turned around, raising his eyebrows.

            “The Blue Lion did, of course,” he said briskly. Keith sat up sharply.

            “But if the Lion can open wormholes, and if the problem is that we’re too far away, why hasn’t she just done _that_?”

            Coran was shaking his head. “Wormholes require a great deal of concentrated and directed quintessence. Alfor built the ability to make a wormhole into each of the lions as a safeguard. It was intended as an emergency retreating strategy. If the lions got trapped, the Paladin could wormhole away and the other Paladins would come find them wherever they’d jumped to safety. They take a long time to recharge and could only do it in the presence of—” Coran hesitated slightly, “—Altean energy,” he said. Keith’s eyebrows drew together. “But they can only wormhole with a pilot. It’s only the partnership of the pilot and the lion that produces enough quintessence to create the wormhole. I imagine with all five future pilots of Voltron in the cockpit at the time, creating a wormhole back to the Castle was easy as catching _numbums_ for the Blue Lion.” Keith had almost resorted to raising a hand to get a word in edgewise.

            “If all she needs is a pilot, why not let one in? Why refuse to let someone else pilot her back to Lance?” Coran shrugged expressively, spreading his arms wide.

            “Voltron is a mysterious creature, Keith,” he said. “Maybe she didn’t think any of them were worthy.” Keith shook his head, and hopped down from his chair.

            “Thanks, Coran,” he said, turning to leave the room. He paused on the threshold, looking back. “And… thanks for the other thing. Again.” Coran smiled beneath his mustache.

            “Anytime, number four,” he said. “And— Keith?” Keith paused again, halfway out the door. “Try not to do anything stupid?” Keith smiled faintly, waved goodnight, and headed back to Lance’s room. His heart didn’t pound against his chest and silence didn’t roar in his ears as he tried to fall asleep, but he spent a long time lying on Lance’s bed, a woman crooning Italian in his ear through the headphones, staring at the dark ceiling and thinking.

*

            If nightmares didn’t wake him up, alarms did. All of them had gotten remarkably good at parsing the alarms, determining which ones meant what (although Pidge had failed as yet to determine _why_ someone had gone to the effort of giving the Castle 133 separate alarms with distinct sounds for each). They existed on a sliding scale of “Someone else’s problem, usually Coran’s” to “HOLY SHIT WE’RE ABOUT TO DIE FOR REAL.” This morning’s alarm was middle high, Keith determined, one of those that said “someone _else_ might be about to die, although if we’re not all on the bridge in Paladin armor in five minutes Allura might also commit some choice murder.” Keith pushed himself out of bed, the headphones falling from his ears, and dashed to his own room, suiting up quickly.

            He felt the slight shift in gravity that meant they’d just shot through a wormhole as he pounded his way to the bridge; by the time he got there, they’d jumped out the other side. Shiro had beaten him, and was looking on grimly at the scene outside the window. An entire Galra fleet had converged on the Creleot System. Shields had gone up around the planets, but they were already torn in places by the ion cannons. A formation of battered rebel fighters rose up from Martara. They arced around, trying to get a shot towards the flagship carrying the ion cannon, but a horde of fighter drones swarmed them, tearing apart their formation.

            “Paladins, to your lions,” Allura said grimly. Two more formations of rebel fighters were rising up, followed by fighter ships from Creleot’s actual military. “There are more Galra arriving.”

            Keith felt his stomach plummet as an entire second fleet started appearing, concentrating their fire on the opposite side of the system. One of the rebel formations veered off course, firing at the new ships. They were hardly more than specks against the mass of black and purple warships and fighters. He turned and ran for Red mechanically, not daring to calculate the odds in his head.

            The lions leapt from their hangars in a blur, spitting fire and vines and white-hot energy. Shiro shouted orders Keith barely heard. They couldn’t be Voltron, so they could do more good splitting up and covering as much ground as possible. Hunk and Pidge veered off towards the first fleet that had appeared, while Shiro and Keith barreled towards the second. The rebels and the Crell military rained down fury on the fleets, even as ion blasts tore apart their ships. Distantly, Keith heard Allura open up comms with the Crells and the rebels, orders and status reports chaotic in his helmet. There were never screams, only bursts of static followed by silence when the canons hit home. A burst of white scraped Red’s claws.

            He didn’t try to listen for orders, beyond keeping half an ear out for Shiro’s voice. He was part of no formation. Red could move faster than any ship, any fighter. He spun through the air, raining fire and tearing ships apart. There was no pattern, no plan. Red got her mouth around a Galra fighter, its wings sparking against her jaw, and he threw it sharp and fast into the side of a warship, where it exploded and blasted out the side of the ship. He caught a piece of debris against Red’s feet and used it to launch himself, arcing upside down over another ship, and blasted its ion cannon without mercy. One action flowed into the next, as instinctual as his next breath. Time and space came apart around him, segmented only into the next threat, the next target. The frozen body of a Galra soldier, blasted into the vacuum of space, floated past him. He tasted blood on his tongue.

            The collective shout of surprise and horror caught his attention. He dove down, out of the way of the nearest warship, and turned Red. A third fleet was arriving, except it wasn’t just a fleet. Zarkon’s personal flagship sailed into existence over them. For a moment they all hung suspended, Galra and Crells and Paladins and rebels alike.

            “It was a trap,” Pidge said. Her voice sounded distant and tinny in his ears. “This whole thing was a trap. Zarkon couldn’t find the Black Lion anymore so he lured us here.”

            “Guys, we—” Hunk started, but stopped. A square of the flagship was opening up, glaring white and purple light silhouetting something impossible emerging from the interior. Something familiar and yet not, something recognizable and yet deeply wrong.

            “What did he _make_?” Allura said. Voltron made in Zarkon’s image dropped from his flagship and hung against the black sky, massive and unthinkable and wrong. Wings extended from its back in spiked feathers, shards of metal and light fit to cut a ship apart. The monster drifted outward, surveying the suspended battle. Silence ate through Keith’s skull. Then Zarkon lifted his arm to fire.

            Before he could, though, the lights on every single Galra ship in all three fleets turned blood red, and then blinked out. A ripple of surprise surged across the rebels, near-inaudible mutters of confusion creating a fuzz of static over the comms. Even Zarkon paused in surprise. In the breath of uncertainly that followed, a new Crell fleet rose up behind Zarkon, their ships white slashed with green. As one, they blasted his fake Voltron in the back.

            It acted like a signal. Suddenly, the Crells and the rebels were hell unleashed. The Galra’s shields were down and their ships all dead in the water. They couldn’t fight or flee, only drift helplessly as they were torn to pieces. Lasers tore through them like tissue paper. Fires erupted and vanished, deprived of air. The lions and the Castle flew as one towards Zarkon, battering him from all sides with the assistance of the Crell fleet. Another sleek black ship appeared — one of the Blades. It fired with deadly precision, circling to find the weak spots in the armor. Zarkon got out a sword and slashed through the Crell fleet, taking out six fighters as he went, but a swarm of them took advantage of the opening to converge on his head, firing everything they had before he managed to get away. Keith heard Shiro grunting with effort.

            “He’s trying to control my lion,” he said. “I forgot how strong his control was.”

            “Fight it, Shiro,” Keith said through gritted teeth.

            “What does he even want your lion for when he’s got _that_?” Hunk said, narrowly getting out of the way of another swipe of the sword.

            Keith heard Allura order them to scatter just in time, wrenching Red away as the Castle fired with a force he hadn’t known they had, driving Zarkon back into his own flagship, the metal of the side groaning and caving in underneath him as the Castle kept firing. Twelve Crell warships rose up on either side of the Castle like avenging angels to add their fire. The Galra fleet was being decimated around them. Some were blasted into the gravitational pull of the nearest planet, their ships burning up in a spectacular fall, bathing the planets with skies of orange and red.

            Keith heard a distant warning shout from Matt, and the Castle suddenly stopped firing and spun away drunkenly. An arc of black electricity streaked through the space where the Castle had been a moment ago. At the same moment, a long, whip-like chain shot out from Zarkon’s arm and snagged another of the Crell warships, slinging it into two of the others. The rest stopped firing, veering out of the way, and Zarkon launched himself forward. The lions and the ships scattered. Instead of attacking, though, he paused, then turned, and flew away. For a moment, the whole Voltron Coalition watched dumbfounded. Then his flagship blew up, torn apart from the inside, exploding into nothing but floating scrap metal. Red was knocked backward by the force of the explosion, and Keith struggled to find up and down again for a moment. The explosion hit the vacuum and abruptly went silent. Keith righted himself, wary, and realized with a start that there was only silence. All three of the Galra fleets had been destroyed to the last fighter. Every surviving Crell and rebel had their weapons trained on where Zarkon had been. Keith looked in the direction he had gone. There was no sign of him.

            No one tried to chase him.

*

            It should have been a party, Keith thought dully. The disjointed group that had assembled on Martara, all still dressed for battle, weapons at their waists and hunted looks in their eyes, should have been drinking and eating and making merry. This was the biggest battle any of them had fought, and the Galra had been annihilated. They should have been burning the remains of the warships in a bonfire. Making smores over broken ion cannons.

            Instead, Allura was caught in a maelstrom of fury, trying desperately to keep the different factions from coming to blows. The rebels were angry the Crell military hadn’t come out to fight faster. The entire first fleet of rebels to fly out to meet the Galra had been destroyed. Everyone on those ships was gone. Pidge stood by Matt, clutching his arm, looking pale. Matt looked unsteady himself, leaning into Pidge as he talked to Olia. The Crells were angry that the Blades had failed to warn them of this attack. If they hadn’t known about something of this scale in advance, then what intel _did_ they have? Or perhaps they really were just working for the Empire, as they had expected all along. Three Blades stood stoically to the side, their faces masked and their thoughts unreadable. Everyone was angry that Voltron was still missing from the fight.

            They had won by sheer dumb luck. Everyone knew it. Whatever had knocked out the power in the Galra ships, that was the only reason the entire system wasn’t being destroyed right now. They may have frightened Zarkon off, but only briefly. The Empire was vast, and even such a devastating blow was little more than a drop in the bucket to him. There were more fleets. He would be back. And the only thing that could conceivably face that monstrosity he had built, would be Voltron. If even Voltron was up to the task.

            The room was a chaos of Crell military and rebel soldiers. Uniforms from four different branches of military swirled around the patchwork armor of the rebels. Hastily wound bandages stood out on a rainbow of skin colors, stained with a dozen different types of blood, from people whose ships had been shot or damaged or crashed to the ground. Keith was squeezed into a corner near Hunk, struggling not to get swept up in an argument. Coran and Shiro stood grimly on either side of Allura, holding back the tide of aliens demanding answers. Could they really trust the Blades? Where was the Blue Paladin? When would Voltron be back? What would they do when Zarkon returned with his false Voltron? Shiro’s eyes were sunk into his head, circled with dark bruises, hunted and haunted in a way Keith hadn’t seen since the Castle had been poisoned. His mouth was a hard, determined line, the expression of a soldier.

            A door a little way down the wall from him led out onto a patio overlooking the city. Keith, desperate for an escape, struggling for air in the increasingly crowded room, edged along the side of the room until he got to the door. He fumbled with the latch for a moment before he managed to push it open and burst out into the fresh air. He practically fell against the low wall, leaning on his elbows and closing his eyes as he sucked in a grateful breath. The remainder of his bangs tickled his forehead.

            “So when you said you were a bit nomadic at the moment…” Keith jumped, spinning around to see Zay standing in the doorway, a bemused smile pulling at his face. He was more fully clothed this time, wearing a buttoned jacket with a Crell military crest on his left shoulder over a dull grey flight suit and boots. A pistol was strapped to the belt at his waist.

            “You’re military,” Keith said. “Oh— I should’ve— I’m— um—” Zay made a sweeping gesture with two fingers that Keith took to mean “stop.”

            “Just a pilot,” he said. “I’m only here because half my squad died and I’m the most senior one left.” There was no real inflection in his voice as he spoke. Keith stared for a minute, trying to read him. There was no anger or grief that he could spot in Zay’s eyes, not even shock. Not even resignation. There was an evenness to him Keith couldn’t wrap his head around. Half a squad gone, and left in charge. How many fighters in a Crell squad? He had no idea. He couldn’t even take the measure of Zay’s loss.

            “We failed you,” he managed eventually, quietly. “This was a trap to lure Voltron in, and Voltron wasn’t even here to defend you.” Zay blinked and then pursed his lips in a remarkably human expression. He pulled the door closed behind him, muffling the sound of the crowded meeting hall.

            “I was a rebel soldier for almost a decade,” he said. “The Glara destroyed my home and colonized my planet when I was almost too young to remember it. Two years ago, I came to Martara on a supply run and I just… stayed. I couldn’t run away from the fight entirely, but I was so exhausted. I didn’t think… I wanted to live at least some of my life somewhere besides a battlefield. At the time, I took it as certainty that there was no possibility of _winning_. All we could do was delay the inevitable.” He moved forward to lean on the wall beside Keith, eyes roaming over the lights of the city. “Whatever they’re saying in there, you can’t take away this reality: this is the first time in 10,000 years we’ve had a fighting chance.” He turned to look at Keith, one arm still resting on the wall, the thin ring of white in his eyes shining in the dark. “I didn’t even realize I never knew what hope felt like before.”

            They held eye contact for a long moment – too long – before Keith broke it by shaking his head and backing away.

            “I— I don’t— I can’t— Whatever we did today, it wasn’t enough. We can do better. We _have_ to do better. We can’t sacrifice people to the Galra. We need—” He swallowed. “We need a Blue Paladin. We need Voltron back.” Zay studied him for a moment, expression unchanging.

            “What happened to your Blue Paladin?” he asked. Keith felt a familiar tightness in his throat and chest. Silence roaring, air vanishing from his lungs, the sounds of the chaos inside distant and fuzzy. He took a shuddering breath.

            “Me,” he said. “I left him behind and he— We lost him.” Zay’s expression shifted oddly. His lips pulled back as if in a smile, but Keith didn’t think that was the intent. His eyes said something else – disbelief, or perhaps skepticism.

            “I doubt he blames you as much as you blame yourself,” he said. Keith laughed humorlessly.

            “He hates me. No, he doesn’t hate me. He—” He hesitated, stumbling, picking apart _I wish_ from _I know_. “He thinks I’m a challenge he has to beat, and he hates losing. Whatever we do, we’re… pushing in opposite directions. We grate against each other in all the wrong ways. We were getting better, but—” He stopped himself. “Why am I telling you this?” Zay made his shrugging gesture.

            “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger.” Keith shook his head slightly, turning away, looking back over the city.

            “We should both get back in there,” he said. He heard Zay sigh, and felt him push away from the wall.

            “It’s been an honor to meet you, Red Paladin.” Keith glanced over his shoulder to see Zay had snapped a salute. Keith felt an ugly memory curl up in his chest at the action.

            “Don’t do that,” he said. Zay dropped his hand, took a breath as if to say something, but turned away instead. Keith cast his eyes back over the city one more time.

            “Keith…” he heard Zay say quietly. He didn’t turn around, but heard Zay rummaging for something. “Please take this.” Reluctantly, he looked back. Zay was holding out a small emergency transmitter. Keith reached out and took it from him slowly. He examined it. It was clearly designed to reach over long distances, but it was a single-use, disposable item, and all it could do was send a GPS signal. There was no way to talk or send a message.

            “Why?” he asked, eyebrows furrowing. Zay shook his head slightly, curls swaying.

            “Just in case,” he said. Then he turned, and disappeared into the crowd inside.

*

            The Paladins, Matt, Coran, and Allura all stumbled back to the Castle in the predawn light. They parted ways at the entrance, none of them towards their beds, despite the bags of exhaustion under their eyes. Keith hit the training deck, drowning anxieties in sweat, until his muscles shivered with exertion and he collapsed against the wall. He hadn’t even changed out of his Paladin armor since the fight yesterday. When his breath no longer felt like it was ripping his chest apart, he made his shuffling way back to his room. He passed Matt and Pidge on the way; they had tucked themselves into a small alcove of the Castle, curled up on a small sofa. Pidge’s laptop was in her lap, a screensaver expanding and contracting in a green and yellow pattern. She had fallen asleep against Matt’s chest, glasses askew. Matt was snoring, head tilted back against the wall, one hand draped loosely over Pidge’s stomach. Their breaths rose and fell in perfect synchronicity. Something warm ached in Keith’s chest at the sight. He kept moving.

            Back in his room, his eyes fell on the blue helmet that had occupied his bedside table for three months. He hadn’t touched it since he’d brought it back from the Galra ship. He set his own helmet down beside it and dropped onto the bed. A remaining trickle of sweat dribbled down the back of his neck, and he shivered. He ought to take a shower, get some rest, return fresh tomorrow. There would be more candidates for Blue Paladin coming. They needed them. They couldn’t afford to wait to find Lance anymore. Keith wasn’t sure how they would do for armor, but they’d probably need the helmet back once they found their new Paladin.

            He picked up the helmet, and picked up his own, weighing the two in his hands. Three months. It had been almost exactly three months since Lance disappeared. How long had they been gone from Earth before that? Four months? Five? How long before Lance’s absence was objectively more normal than his presence? How long before there would be a day, a week, a month when Keith didn’t try to figure out what clue he might have missed, what hint could have been in the screaming silence to tell him where Lance had gone?

            Abruptly, he stood, a helmet dangling from each hand. His body protested, muscles trembling, but he grit his teeth and walked out of the room. He caught the faint scent of something cooking – Hunk stress-baking, no doubt – as he went past the kitchen. He saw the glow of holograms on the Castle bridge – Shiro or Coran or Allura, or possibly all three of them. He forged ahead, ignoring his labored breathing, heading down to Blue’s hangar. He was so focused on just moving forward that he almost crashed straight into Allura, pacing back and forth outside Blue’s door.

            He stumbled back a step and she paused. The two of them stared at each other, frozen, wary. Keith shifted awkwardly. They hadn’t been alone together since their disastrous flight away from Taujeer. They’d still barely spoken since Keith had found out he was part Galra. He looked down and away, helmets heavy in his hands.

            “Keith,” she said. Her voice was neutral, more surprised than chilly. Or perhaps she was just too tired to be furious at him right now.

            “Princess,” he responded.

            “What are you doing down here?” she asked. He shrugged, raising the helmets.

            “I didn’t really know where else to go,” he said. To his surprise, she sighed, leaning slightly back against the wall.

            “Me neither,” she admitted.

            They stood in the corridor in silence for a few more minutes, Keith keeping his eyes on his feet, trying to ignore the feeling that his knees might buckle under him at any time. Tension hung thick between them.

            “You should try again,” Keith said. Allura lifted her head towards him, confusion crossing her face. He tasted ash and iron as he tried to speak, but he repeated himself. “You should try to see if Blue will let you in. If anyone ever deserved to be a Paladin, it’s you. And we need Voltron more than ever.” Something in Allura’s face softened, some hardness Keith hadn’t even quite seen before.

            “I’m almost afraid to try,” she said. She resumed her pacing, much slower than before, her feet dragging across the floor. “What am I supposed to do if the blue lion still will not select a pilot? We need Voltron. If I could get Lance back, I would in a heartbeat. But I do not know how to find him. And now we have no more time.”

            “I know,” Keith said. He set the helmets on the floor. “Allura, I—”

            “I owe you an apology.” They said it at the same time, and both looked equally startled. A small smile passed over Allura’s face and both of them laughed. It was soft, and quiet, and there was no real comedy behind it, but it was the first moment of connection they’d had in months. Keith ran a hand across the shaved back of his head.

            “Uh,” he said, “I’ll—” at the same moment that Allura tried to say, “Why don’t I—” They both stopped again, sharing another awkward chuckle, Allura brushing stray hair away from her eyes.

            “Let me,” she said. “Keith, I’ve been unfair to you, and to all of the Blades.” The strand of hair fell back over her eyes and she tucked it impatiently behind her ear. “I talked to Kolivan. The power going out in the Galra ships – that was part of the plan the Blade of Marmora had been working on, before they lost contact with their agent Commander Thace. Kolivan thinks that Thace must have still been alive, most likely kept for interrogation. He must have gotten free somehow during the fight and released the virus into the flagship’s mainframe, reprogramming it to spread to all the Galra ships in the area. He also thinks Thace is responsible for the explosion that took out the flagship. Just before the ship exploded, the Blades received a transmission. ‘Knowledge or death’ was all it said.” She took a deep breath. “You have been impatient and reckless, but I couldn’t ask for a better Red Paladin. And the Blades saved all our lives today. I am sorry it took me so long to accept that there could be Galra on our side.” Keith felt winded. He leaned slightly against the wall. Allura was watching him, refracted blue eyes expectant and shining.

            “I never properly apologized to you for how selfish I was flying off to the prison,” he said. “And I haven’t been the best Paladin lately. I know that. I’m sorry for being so… hard to reach.” He froze, unable to react as Allura abruptly threw her arms around him.

            “I’m so sorry about Lance,” she said, her head buried against his shoulder. “I pushed all of you into being Paladins. You all put yourselves in danger because I asked you to. Whatever happened to Lance, it’s my fault.” Keith was standing ramrod straight, terrified of moving.

            “No,” he said. When she didn’t let go of him, he awkwardly and cautiously brought his arms up to rest loosely against Allura’s back. “We all chose to stay,” he said. “The Empire is trying to take over the entire universe. It’s our fight just as much as it is yours.” Allura squeezed him tighter for a moment, and then broke out of the hug and moved away. Keith let go instantly, trying to hide his sigh of relief.

            “I keep wondering what my father would have done,” she said, eyes on the door into Blue’s hangar. “He understood the lions better than anyone. He would have had an idea, I’m sure.” Keith followed her gaze.

            “Have you gone in yet?” he asked. She shook her head, the strand of hair falling out from behind her ear again.

            “It’s going to be freezing cold in there with the hangar left open.” She hesitated. “And I don’t know if I can stand to see her still refusing to move.” Her fingers traced the edge of the pad to open the door. Keith took a deep breath.

            “Allura,” he said. His heart pounded irregularly against his chest. He was no good at this, he’d never been good at this, never had a chance to properly practice it. No one ever wanted comfort from _him_. “All those people out there today – the rebels, and the Crells, and the Blades, _us_ , none of us would have been there if it weren’t for you. We got lucky, yeah. But we managed to take advantage of that luck because you brought us all together.” He swallowed. “No matter what Blue thinks, I’m proud to fight alongside you.” Allura’s mouth had parted in surprise. She gave him an odd look, fingers still running along the edge of the pad.

            “Thank you, Keith,” she said. Her fingers hovered for a moment, and then she pressed down. The hangar doors whooshed open with a rush of freezing air. Keith reached down and picked up the helmets, following her inside.

            They stood at the edge of the room, watching Blue. She was quiet, her eyes dark, her shield up. Keith appreciated her size anew, staring up at her. Gashes still ran down the bowed-out wall behind her.

            “You know,” he said, “you never told us what the Blue Lion is like. Lance interrupted you.” Allura was quiet for a moment before responding.

            “The Blue Lion is about teamwork, and learning and growing, and self-sacrifice. Black is the head, but she’s the heart.”

            “The heart’s in the leg?” Keith asked, frowning, but Allura didn’t seem to notice.

            “I thought it was odd, at first, that Lance would be the one who was supposed to pilot Blue. He seemed so full of himself. And with you, especially, it didn’t seem like teamwork was going to be his strong suit. But with him gone, it does feel like there is something missing.”

            “Yeah,” Keith agreed. Allura moved forward slowly, and gently rested her hand against the shield. It did not come down. She sighed, her shoulders slumping.

            “It doesn’t need to be me,” she said, “but I just want us to have Voltron again. I just want to be able to protect people, the way my father wanted to.” Keith shifted, unsure of what to say. Allura shook her head, and turned around. “You should get some rest,” she said. Keith just shrugged. He set the helmets down and slid down the wall, ignoring how cold it was. The moment he started to sit, his legs all but gave out from under him.

            “I’m not sure I’ll make it back up,” he said with a shaky laugh. “I’ll be fine down here for now.” She frowned at him, but moved towards the door. She paused as she drew level with him.

            “Thank you,” she said. “For deciding to stay.” Keith looked away.

            “It wasn’t a hard decision,” he said. “This is the most family I’ve ever had.” He felt her hesitate, thought for a moment she might say something else, but a moment later he heard the door hiss open and shut. He turned his head back to look at Blue.

            Something faint stirred in his chest, a flicker of connection, a pale sense of warmth. It was an odd thought, that all those months out in the desert, she’d been the one calling to him. He wasn’t her Paladin, he could never be her Paladin. Still, they’d formed some kind of bond, however distant – something more than he had with Yellow or Green. There was a strange sort of irony in the idea that he had, however unwittingly, spent a year trying to find her, to bring her Paladin to her, and now he was stuck in reverse, wishing he could bring the lion to the Paladin.

            She _felt_ like Lance. Those connections they made during Voltron were so nebulous, so difficult to describe, and in their most united moments, Keith felt indistinguishable from the other Paladins and Lions alike. Voltron wasn’t five lions and five pilots. It was ten made one, a single mind with a single driving purpose. They lost themselves in the flood when they worked together best. In the moments of pulling together and pulling apart, though, individuals left impressions. Something about the way Lance’s mind felt – dancing, swirling, a dozen thoughts at once, ready to spin and leap through oceans and space, with deeper undertows pulling at him from beneath – something about that echoed in Blue. If he closed his eyes, and let himself drift, he could almost imagine he were brushing thoughts with Lance again, feather-light images intertwining to make shared memories.

            He must have dozed despite the cold, because the roaring woke him. He jerked up with a start, heart pounding in his chest, his breath frosty in the air. Blue’s eyes were bright, and she was roaring furiously, fit to deafen the entire Castle. Keith felt terror climbing his throat, except it wasn’t just terror. His hand groped at his neck, desperate to claw off fingers that weren’t there. He couldn’t breathe. He was choking, he was _being strangled, dying, he was dying, LANCE WAS DYING—_

            He didn’t think. He didn’t notice picking up the helmets. He was running full tilt across the hangar, leaping for Blue’s mouth. She paused just long enough to catch him. He fell on his face trying to get to the cockpit, and scrambled forward on hands and knees, gasping for air. Blue surged forward, out the open hangar door.

            The moment he grasped her controls he knew this was _wrong_. A link grew between him and Blue, but it sparked and clashed and left him feeling woozy. This was not his lion, and he was not her pilot. Everything about the two of them was out of sync, and it battered at his mind like it would tear him apart. The world spun and Blue see-sawed drunkenly, but he gripped the controls with deadly determination. It didn’t matter, not in that moment, because in that moment they had exactly one thing in common, and it superseded everything else: _get to Lance_. That was the only thought in Keith’s head as he shoved the controls forward, accelerating to he didn’t know where, biting his tongue bloody with frustration that she was slower than Red. A wormhole tore open the sky in front of him. He jammed his helmet over his head, trying to call back to the Castle, but he didn’t manage to say anything before Blue had flown headlong into it.

            They rushed forward, Keith half-blind with sweat and dizziness. Lance’s helmet knocked against his knee and fell to the floor. He hung on to Blue’s controls, trying to keep Lance in his mind, trying to find him, picture him, reach him somehow. He tried to give her his quintessence, willed her to take them to him. Abruptly, the pressure on his neck released, and he gasped wildly for air, oxygen rushing to his brain. _Alive. Still alive_. Where or how he didn’t know, but for a moment he could _feel_ Lance, feel Lance’s heart pounding in his own chest. He thought he could hear Blue repeating his own mantra: _alive, alive, still alive_. He still had time. He pushed the controls forward as far as they would go.

            By the time they shot out of the wormhole, Keith was nauseated, clinging to the controls with slick, sweaty fingers, trying desperately to hold back vomit. He raised his eyes to look out, and screamed with frustration, slamming a hand against the control panel. It hadn’t worked. She hadn’t brought him to Lance. She’d just reversed course from her last solo trip, coming back to Earth. She was aiming straight for the desert where they’d found her. He slumped in the chair, tears boiling in his eyes. The thin sliver of connection between them frayed and snapped as he let himself be carried down. He pulled his helmet off, trying to breathe evenly. A sheen of sweat painted his skin. It was like someone had taken a whisk to his insides. He could feel Blue’s presence faintly, hardly more than he could feel her in Voltron, her mind colliding with his own in a harsh and mismatched pattern, all their thoughts off-key.

            Alive, but not here. He’d done something reckless and useless again. She was just descending to the same cave where they had found her. He tugged at the controls, but he was just a passenger now. She settled softly on the ground, her paws digging into the sand, and Keith pushed himself to his feet with a sigh. If he was back in the last place in the universe he cared about visiting, he could at least grab a change of clothes while he waited for the Castle to catch up. Coran had said the lions only had one wormhole in them without a long recharge, and Keith very much doubted he’d be able to pilot Blue again anyway. His legs trembled beneath him as he walked out. She’d landed just outside the cave. He didn’t relish the idea of the hike back to his house under the afternoon desert sun, but sitting in the cave with no food or water was an even less appealing prospect. He tucked his helmet under one arm, and set off trudging across the sand. He’d been back and forth from this cave enough, even if he hadn’t realized its significance. He barely needed to watch where he was going.

            The house came into view as rickety and dusty as the day he had left — how long had it been? Seven months, now? He sucked in a lungful of hot desert air past chapped lips, and covered the last ground thinking gratefully of running water. He was too tired, too spent to think of much else. He mounted the steps to the porch. Dejected and defeated, he reached down, grasped the handle, and pushed open the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honey, I'm home~
> 
> I hope you know I've been planning the next scene for so long that I am now _utterly terrified_ of actually writing it
> 
> My dear friend and generally lovely person and artist [@fluffyblue-artnwriting](http://fluffyblue-artnwriting.tumblr.com/) has made some [very adorable](http://fluffyblue-artnwriting.tumblr.com/post/173041047043/some-undercutkeiths-these-were-vaguely) and [awesome undercut!Keith](http://fluffyblue-artnwriting.tumblr.com/post/174157583998/me-uploading-a-drawing-with-colours-its-more) drawings that you should VERY MUCH check out and reblog. (There's art!!!???? For a fic I wrote????? Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?????)
> 
> Please leave comments, they make my day whenever I get them!!!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's a season 6?

### NOW

            A loud creak from the door jolted him awake. Lance sat up, startled, and his heart lurched into his throat when he saw the shack door easing open. He scrambled to his feet, pulse pounding so hard he felt like Zethrid was choking him again. Someone must have followed him, or tracked him, he thought, cursing under his breath. It was too much of a coincidence that someone else had found the shack now. Stupid, stupid, he shouldn’t have trusted another word out of Lotor’s mouth. Shouldn’t have taken the bike, should never have even gone to confront him. Shouldn’t have led them straight to his safe house. Shouldn’t have done a lot of things.

            Late afternoon sunlight flooded through the door, red and blinding. He squinted at the silhouette that stepped through the door, struggling to make out its features. It was too short for Lotor, but wearing something white and bulky in the shoulders that didn’t look like a Garrison uniform. The silhouette’s head was down, watching their boots kick up the sand that swirled in on a desert breeze. They were carrying something – a helmet? – under their arm. Then they looked up, and the helmet crashed to the floor.

            “What?” The silhouette stared, mouthing soundlessly for a moment. “Lance?” Lance flinched at the sound of his name, still trying to blink the sun from his eyes. The silhouette’s features faded into view slowly, familiar and strange all at once, like an old song in a new key. He struggled to place them, out of context and somehow shifted, reframed. “Is that— Is that actually you? How?” Their voice was breathless, hoarse and strangled, but it clicked with the face into a pattern that he knew. His jaw dropped in startled recognition.

            “ _Keith_?” he asked, incredulous. “Is that _you_? I almost didn’t recognize you without your mullet.”

            Keith was gaping, looking shell-shocked, eyes fixed on Lance as if he was afraid he might vanish if he so much as blinked. He was wearing the same kind of white armor the Garrison had shown Lance, only streaked with red instead of blue and dusted over with sand. Sweat trickled down his forehead, next to his shorn hair. He half-reached out to Lance, and then suddenly rushed towards him. Lance jumped back, nearly tripping on the table, and Keith pulled up short, still staring.

            “Oh, God, I’m— _Jesus fucking Christ_ , _Lance_. You’re— Do you mean you’ve been _here_? You’ve been fucking _here_ this whole time? Are you— Am I hallucinating again or are you—” He reached out his hand again. “Please tell me you’re real.” Lance knocked his hand away.

            “Of course I’m real, what are you—? What the—” Keith reached forward too fast for Lance to react and grabbed him, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug.

            “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

            “Um, okaaaay, you can stop now,” Lance said, trying to extricate himself, awkwardly squirming until Keith let go. Keith fell back a step, eyes still fixed on him. “What, exactly, are you sorry for?”

            “I should’ve had your back. It’s my fault you— what _did_ happen to you? How did end up back _here_?”

            “Uhmm.” Keith’s appearance had been so unexpected that everything Lotor had told him had momentarily flown from his mind, but now it all came crashing back, followed by a wave of uncertainty. Was Keith brainwashed? Had that witch-queen Lotor had mentioned sent him? Or was that a lie, a manipulation from Lotor? Had anything he had said about the Alteans been true? Would Keith have ever allowed someone to cut off his mullet if he weren’t brainwashed? “I… crashed?” Keith’s brow furrowed as Lance shifted awkwardly. “But, uh, how did _you_ find me?”

            “It was Blue,” he said. “She went ballistic when you…” Keith’s hand crept to his throat. “Lance, are you okay? Who was hurting you?” Lance’s fingers jumped reflexively to his neck. Were there already bruises? How long had it been since his altercation with Zethrid? Could he tell Keith about it? Who did he trust less?

            “I’m fine, I’ll explain later,” he settled on for a response. “But… Blue?” Keith nodded vigorously.

            “I managed to pilot her just long enough for her to make a wormhole and jump back here. At first I thought… It doesn’t matter. She was right.”

            “Blue…” Comprehension dawned. “Oh, do you mean the ‘blue Voltron lion’?” Keith frowned at him oddly.

            “What else would I mean?” Lance ignored him, leaning over the couch to lift up the sheet from the window, but saw only empty desert as usual. “She landed back at the cave,” Keith supplied. Lance dropped the curtain, turning to frown at him.

            “But how did you find me _here_ , then?” Keith shook his head.

            “I didn’t know you would be here.” His voice cracked oddly. If Lance hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he saw tears in his eyes. “I thought Blue had made a mistake.” He reached out as if to grip Lance’s shoulder, but Lance moved back again and he dropped the hand. “I was just coming to get a change of _clothes_ , I almost didn’t— Doesn’t matter.” Lance frowned, tilting his head.

            “Why did you come _here_ to get clothes? How did you even know this shack _was_ here?” Keith’s enraptured staring at Lance vanished and his face contorted with confusion.

            “Lance, are— are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

            “I’m— fine. Why?”

            “What are you— What do you mean, how did I know the shack was here?”

            “Well it’s not like we’re on a major road,” Lance said, gesturing sarcastically at the window. Keith shook his head as if trying to get water out of his ears.

            “I’m confused. Did you think I forgot how to get to my own house?”

            “ _Your_ house?” Lance almost started to laugh. “What do you mean?”

            Keith stared at him, but a different kind of stare now. This one was baffled, almost suspicious. “Yeah, Lance, _my house_. Did you hit your head or something?”

            “You—” Lance’s jaw dropped as he understood what Keith was saying, and a hysterical laugh bubbled up in his chest. “ _You’re_ Kent? You— _you_. You of all people, _you’re Kent_?”

            “Who the fuck is Kent?”

            “It’s— Oh my God, don’t tell me I’ve been— This has been _your house_ the _entire time_?” Keith looked completely lost.

            “Who else? What— what are _you_ doing in my house, anyway? Have you been trying to signal us? What _happened_ to you?” Lance passed a hand over his eyes. He wondered if he might jolt awake any moment to find this had all been an exceptionally vivid dream. But Keith looked too real, felt too real – and Lance didn’t think he could have dreamed up Keith in an undercut. Somehow, with the aliens and the bayard and all, that was still one of the strangest sights he’d encountered in the last three months.

            “What happened to me, what happened to _you_? What happened to your hair? And what are you _wearing_?” He could see how Keith’s answer lined up with Lotor’s story. At least he’d have options for what not to believe anymore.

            The moment he’d mentioned hair, Keith’s hand had jumped to rub at the buzzcut on the back of his head, but at the last question, he froze and stared. “Lance,” he said slowly, letting his arm drop back to his side. “Can you answer a question for me?”

            “Uh. Sure?” Lance tilted his head slightly, frowning at Keith.

            “When we uh. When we found the Blue Lion. How did you get her shield to come down?” Well, crap, the cat was out of the bag now.

            “I don’t remember,” he said. There was a brief flash of light in Keith’s hand and suddenly he was holding a sword. Lance yelped and stumbled back, his legs hitting the stacks of paper as Keith rushed and pinned his shoulder against the wall, pressing the edge of the sword up against his chest. Lance tried to lean away, practically sitting on a stack of calculation papers, the edge of a book digging into his thigh. Keith’s grip turned to iron, shoving him upright.

            “Who the hell are you? Where’s the real Lance?” he demanded. Fury burned in his eyes, so intense that Lance tried to shrink away into the wall. He brought his hands up in surrender.

            “Oh my God, Keith, it’s me, it’s _me_! I have amnesia, you dumb shit. Can you _cool it_ with the _sword_ why do you even _have_ that?”

            “What?” Keith’s brow furrowed again, and he drew back just slightly. Lance took a deep breath, chest expanding into the grace room Keith had allowed him. “Amnesia?” Keith asked, as if it was a foreign word.

            “Yes, amnesia. Hunk and Pidge and I were sneaking out of the Garrison, next thing I know I’m waking up in the hospital being told I’ve been missing for four months. I don’t remember a thing that happened in the meantime.” Keith’s forehead knitted together and he glared at Lance, looking him up and down.

            “But you said you crashed.”

            “That’s what the Garrison told me, but frankly, I don’t know how much I trust them right now. Can you _get off_?” Lance got a knee up between them, ramming it towards Keith’s stomach harder than he really meant to. It had the desired effect – Keith stumbled back wheezing, sword dropping to his side – but unfortunately Lance had failed to account for the armor. His thigh slammed into the bottom of Keith’s chest plate, and he fell on top of the paper, groaning and clutching his leg. Papers scattered everywhere as he slipped off the stack and down to the ground. Keith’s sword seemed to evaporate into a flash of light against his thigh as he coughed and gasped for breath. “Sorry,” Lance grunted. “I didn’t really mean to—”

            “Amnesia?” Keith asked again. He looked up sideways at Lance, eyes narrowed, scanning him. “So you don’t remember…” Lance sat up, rubbing at the top of his leg.

            “I get flashes every now and then.” He hesitated for a second before continuing. “I got one of you – I was injured, you were helping me sit up, I said something about us being a good team…” Keith’s eyes widened, and he abruptly doubled over in a fit of laughter that turned into another bout of coughing. “What’s so funny?”

            “That— _No_ — You can’t— You can’t be serious. You remembered _that_?”

            “Hey, I’m pretty sure I was dying! It was a traumatic experience!” Keith sobered up abruptly, standing upright as Lance climbed back to his feet, trying to avoid putting weight on his right leg. Slowly, Keith stepped back towards him. “Hey hey hey hey hey, don’t get that sword out again! I’ll kick you in the balls, I mean it!” Keith paused, raising his hands up in surrender. Then he reached out from where he was and very, very slowly poked Lance in the chest. Lance let it happen, let Keith’s finger press him backwards toward the wall, just watched as he withdrew it and both his hands fell limply to his sides.

            “It’s really you?” he asked. His voice was hoarse again.

            “The one and only,” Lance answered. It came out oddly hushed. He had a strange impulse to return the gesture, to reach out and poke Keith, to see if he might dissolve out of existence when touched. Then his thigh throbbed with pain and reminded him that Keith was, in fact, very solid. “What about you? Are you— Did you escape?” Keith frowned and shook his head.

            “Escape? No, I— Wait. You mentioned Voltron. But if you don’t remember… does the _Garrison_ know about Voltron now? How?”

            “Ah,” Lance said. He tried to think quickly, but there were too many conflicting possibilities crowding his head. Someone had lied about how he lost his memory. The telescope man’s sudden forgetfulness was too much of a coincidence. But Lotor had seemed genuinely surprised when he confronted him. Could it be that Lotor had been honest all along, and the _Garrison_ had been the liars? But Lotor had said his memory loss had been caused by the Altean queen’s brainwashing, so he had to be lying. Didn’t he? Or – another possibility hit him like a truck – if Keith was here, then maybe the Alteans were too, and _she_ had been the one to brainwash Chuck. How she would even have found him or why, Lance didn’t know, but who knew how many pieces he was missing? “Um… Lotor told them,” he hazarded, watching Keith for a reaction to the name. He got nothing except another frown.

            “Who the hell is Lotor?” Lance bit his lip. He might be about to walk into the biggest mistake of his life, but whatever else had happened, he had one thread of memory he could trust was real, and it was Keith helping him, possibly even saving his life.

            “He’s an alien,” he said finally. Keith went very still. “He’s a— Galra.” The word still rolled strangely in his mouth, like foreign candy. “Keith?” He’d gone white as a sheet. His hand trembled down by his side.

            “All this time— And you didn’t even know what—” His shoulders heaved with the effort to breathe. Lance inched forward tentatively.

            “Uh… Keith? Are you okay?” Keith looked up sharply and clenched his trembling hand into a fist.

            “I’m fine,” he said. “But if there are Galra here, we need to get back to your lion _now_. Come on.” Lance backed away, edging sideways along the wall, moving towards the conspiracy board.

            “No, nuh-uh, I am not going anywhere with you,” he said. Keith glared.

            “We don’t have time for this, _come on_. It shouldn’t take Allura too long to locate the Blue Lion, which means the Castle will be here soon. Hopefully the healing pod will fix your memory. But we need to _move_.”

            “Right, I only understood about half of what you just said, but I’m not going back into outer space.”

            “Lance, you _have_ to. It isn’t safe here. And if the Galra are here then we need to form Voltron, and take them out. We need you for that.”

            “Yeah, see, the problem is, Lotor told me that the Alteans are the ones who aren’t safe.” He crossed his arms, planting himself by the conspiracy board. “He told me they kidnapped Shiro, and then you and me and Pidge and Hunk.”

            “What? We— He lied to you.”

            “How do I know you’re not the one lying to me?”

            “Why would I lie?”

            “If you’ve been brainwashed.”

            “We don’t have _time_ for this!” Keith shouted. Lance flinched. “Lance, _please_ ,” he begged. “Please listen to me. I’m not brainwashed, and the Alteans aren’t evil. The _Galra_ are the ones trying to take over the universe. I don’t know what this Lotor person told you, but the Galra—” He paused, brought up short by something, swallowed, and continued. “The Galra are the dangerous ones. They tried to destroy six entire planets just yesterday. And we _can’t_ let the Voltron lions fall into the Empire’s hands.” Lance sighed. He was so tired. There had been too many revelations today, piling one on top of another. Now even Kent’s shack belonged to Keith goddamn Kogane and he was here in the flesh wearing spaceman armor. For the first time, Lance wished he’d taken his parents’ advice and just gone back to Cuba. He almost wished he’d never come to the Garrison at all.

            Almost.

            “Look, I’ll come see the blue lion.” Keith’s immediate relief was palpable. Lance held up a finger. “Only,” he said, “because I’m hoping it might jog my memories. I’m not _flying_ anywhere with you. I can’t just _leave Earth_.”

            “Okay,” Keith said. “Maybe reestablishing your bond with the blue lion will fix your amnesia.” He moved back towards the door, collecting his helmet off the floor. “My bike should still be out here, we’ll take that.”

            “Ah,” Lance said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Um, _your_ bike is actually in an abandoned garage on the edge of town. The bike out there is one from the Garrison.” Keith’s eyes widened.

            “Then they know where—” He shoved the helmet back over his head and peeked out the door, squinting into the setting sun. “No one’s come after you yet. Come on!” Lance hesitated one last time, but Keith turned to back to look at him, and eyes flashed in his memory in time with his heartbeat. At this point, he just wanted answers, and Keith was offering them.

            “What the hell,” he muttered under his breath, and followed Keith out the door.

            Keith jumped on the front of the hoverbike, and Lance climbed on hesitantly behind him. He’d hardly even noticed in his wild flight away from Lotor and the Garrison, but this wasn’t exactly the same as the hoverbike he’d been using. It must be a newer model – it was smaller and lighter, with a holoscreen array of options he didn’t even recognize.

            “Hang on,” Keith said. Lance wrapped his arms around Keith’s midsection and very sternly told his heart to calm down. Then the bike shot forward so fast he almost fell off.

            “Whoa, Keith, are you trying to kill us?” he shouted over the wind. Keith either did not or chose not to hear him, gunning the bike across the desert, stirring up a dust trail. Lance squinted his eyes near shut against the onslaught of hot wind and sand. He tried to hide his head behind Keith’s helmet.

            A thousand questions peppered his brain as he tucked himself against Keith’s back, jacket flapping in the wind. A thousand reasons to trust Keith over Lotor argued themselves out, and as many the other way around. Even if they had been together in outer space – as insane as that sounded – Keith knew him as a nuisance at most, or possibly didn’t even know he was alive. Why would he help him? He pressed his lips together, trying not to inhale dust, and stayed silent.

            Keith yanked the bike to a stop so abruptly Lance smacked his head against the back of his helmet. As he was groaning and rubbing his forehead, he heard Keith whisper a breathless, “No.”

            “Ow,” Lance said pointedly.

            “Lance, look.” Keith was pointing to the sky. Lance looked up, squinting, eyes still watering from the ride, and then his jaw dropped. Just visible over the top of a rock formation, a dozen Garrison ships surrounded a massive blue lion. Some kind of energy field encircled it, preventing the Garrison’s steel cables from reaching it, but even as they watched, another ship swooped down from the sky. It was black and silent, and Lance recognized it as his stomach sank into his toes.

            “That’s Lotor’s ship,” he said. A beam of purple light burst from the bottom of it, enveloping the blue lion, defensive energy field and all. The lion began to rise from the ground. Lance felt Keith practically trembling against him, shaking his head. Lotor’s ship rose too, and the Garrison ships reeled their cables back in, following his lead. When the lion was far enough off the ground, Lotor turned and flew back towards the Garrison, a squad of ships encircling the lion that was still trapped in his tractor beam like an honor guard.

            “No!” Keith growled. He gripped the controls tightly, as if he were about to take off after them, but suddenly he looked back at Lance and squeezed his eyes shut. “We can’t go after them. Not right now. Not without backup. I don’t know what this Lotor guy is capable of. We’ll have to wait for Allura.” His hands relaxed slightly. “Lance?” he asked, more softly.

            Lance was staring after the blue lion, heart pounding in his chest in a way that no longer had anything to do with fear or the way he could feel the rise and fall of Keith’s breath through his fingers. The air around him felt electric, charged with static shock that made all his hair stand on end. Memory teased the corners of his brain, light dissolving the shadowed lost months into indistinct shapes. He felt heat in his chest, a warmth that seemed to light him from within, and it was at once a brand new sensation and achingly, intimately familiar. He struggled to reach out to it, struggled for clarity in the confused fog of his unveiled memory. For a moment, it seemed to work. The edges grew clearer, sharper, until he almost thought he could remember faces, remember the shapes of massive lions towering over him. But then they grew _too_ sharp, they poked and stabbed at him as he tried to focus on the thought of them. The faces distorted into shards that shrieked and scraped across his mind. Lance pressed a hand against his temple as the heat in his chest grew to burning, keening with pain behind his teeth. He could hear Keith speaking, distant and distorted, until a piercing ringing drowned it out.

            Then the ships passed behind the rocks, taking the blue lion out of sight, and the connection _snapped_ so hard it sent Lance reeling backward, almost falling off the bike. Keith shouted in surprise as he struggled to keep the bike from tilting over and falling on them both, reaching a hand behind him and grasping at Lance’s shirt. Lance fought for breath, tears dripping from the corners of his eyes. Darkness slammed down over his mind, any pieces of memory he’d regained lost once again. The ringing stopped and the burning vanished, but it left behind a feeling of cold and hollow nothing in its place. He sagged, Keith’s hand twisted in his shirt the only thing that kept him from slumping to the ground. The heat of the sunset on his skin felt distant and faint.

            Slowly, he came back. He felt Keith’s other hand grasp his shoulder, push him upright. He could see him shouting, his mouth moving below the edge of the visor on his helmet, fighting for his attention. He saw the shape of his name on Keith’s lips, a searingly familiar curve and contraction. He watched him as if in slow motion, could faintly hear the sound of “Are you okay?” He reached up and grasped the hand still knotted in his shirt, gripping it for stability. Sound returned in a rush with the noise of an approaching ship. Keith looked up and cursed. Lance followed his gaze, getting a faceful of dust kicked up by the Garrison ship rising over the rock formation in front of them. His and Keith’s hands both clenched tighter, until he suddenly realized what he was doing and let go abruptly. Keith released his shirt to grip his other shoulder, turning in his seat.

            “Lance, we have to move. Can you hold on to me?” Still feeling dazed, Lance nodded, eyes darting back towards the ship. It was moving towards them, picking up speed. “Lance, _are you sure_?”

            “Yes, I can hold on!” he snapped. His breath dragged at his chest, hot and dry, the words sticky against his tongue. “But what are you going to do? You can’t outrun a ship!” Keith turned around and grabbed the bike’s controls.

            “Just shut up and trust me,” he said. For whatever reason, that sent a jolt through him, and he wordlessly threw his arms back around Keith’s stomach. For the briefest moment, Keith laid a hand against one of Lance’s arms, as if checking he were secure. Then the bike shot forward. The ship followed after them.

            Lance ducked his head down and pressed it against the back of Keith’s armor, squeezing his eyes shut, still trying to clear his head, trying to ignore the wild movements of the bike. Keith weaved in between the rock formations like he’d been born to do it. Lance could hear the ship’s engines screeching above them as it banked clumsily, trying to keep up. The wind from the ship tossed dust and sand over them, and a particularly bad gust got into Lance’s mouth. He came up coughing and squinting, tightening his grip on Keith, taut as a wire under his hands. They made a particularly sharp turn and sprayed up a wall of sand beside them, and then immediately reversed course around a natural stone pillar. They ducked as Keith drove them under a low-hanging cliff, and Lance barely avoided sliding off sideways as he pulled them so close to the edge of a cliff that the bike nearly stood on end. Then Lance realized that he was aiming for the entrance to a cave, and panicked. He tapped Keith’s chest frantically.

            “Not in there!” he shouted. “I can’t go in the caves! The carvings! I can’t—”

            “I told you to trust me!”

            “Keith, no—”

            They sped into darkness, the change so abrupt that Lance prayed Keith’s spaceman helmet had some kind of night vision, so he wasn’t driving blind. When his own eyes started to adjust he squeezed them shut. Maybe if he couldn’t see the carvings then the piercing screeching tearing would stay out of his head, maybe his own memories wouldn’t try to rip apart his mind.

            The sound of the ship faded behind them until all Lance could hear was the echoing hum of the bike’s engine and his and Keith’s labored breathing. Cautiously, he cracked an eyelid partway open, and the sat up straight, peeling himself off of Keith’s back. Keith had turned the headlights on, scattering shadows across the cave walls, which were plain old rock, empty of obscure alien carvings. They were in some sort of natural tunnel, twisting and turning through a mountain. They’d slowed slightly, but Keith never hesitated when the passages branched or split, leaning low and determined over the handlebars. Lance ducked his head to avoid an overhang of rock. He pressed his lips together, remembering the extensive maps Kent had sketched of the caves, and didn’t ask how Keith knew where he was going.

            They rounded another corner and Lance squinted his eyes against the sudden circle of light that came into view. Keith pulled on the brakes, slowing the bike to a stop just shy of the edge of the cave. The open desert unfurled beyond the rock walls, empty and foreboding. Keith paused, listening. They could hear no sound of the Garrison ship. He tapped Lance’s arms to get him to let go, and slid off the bike, throwing one glance back.

            “Stay here,” he said, and crept towards the sunlight. Lance gripped the edge of the bike, his fingers white-knuckling as he fought to keep his breathing steady. Keith edged sideways into the light. His helmet reflected the light, making his face invisible. Lance saw him crane his neck upwards, glancing back and forth, and step out slightly further. After a few more excruciating seconds, he came back, throwing a leg over the bike. “We’re clear, let’s go,” he said. Lance just had time to grab hold again before they were flying out, Keith gunning the bike as fast as it could move, speeding across open sand. He took one look back, to see the flicker of a Garrison ship on the other side of a rock formation, circling, searching, as the sun sank below the horizon. 

*

            Keith found a small sand dune on the edge of town, just tall enough to shield the bike from the view of anyone casually glancing over from the nearest buildings. The second he and Lance jumped off it, the sword materialized in his hand again. Lance scrambled backward with a yelp as he slashed the holoscreen, destroying the bike’s computer. He hacked at it a few more times as Lance stared, the bike sparking, dropping to the ground, and going dark and silent.

            “They haven’t followed us, which probably means they haven’t accessed the GPS yet. Hopefully that means they don’t know where the house is, but we shouldn’t go back into the desert just yet. They might still be looking for us.” Lance took a step back, holding up his hands.

            “Okay, stop, just stop. I don’t get what’s happening, but seeing that— that _thing_ today just about split my brain in half. I don’t want to get anywhere near it ever again.” He wrapped his jacket around him as a chilly nighttime breeze cut his skin. “Whatever happened, I just need to— I just need to go home. I never asked to be part of an alien conspiracy.” The sword vanished from Keith’s hand as he pressed his lips together.

            “If the Galra are here, you don’t have a choice,” he said harshly. “You _have_ to get your memories back, Lance.”

            “What if I can’t?” he snapped. He tucked his fingers up into his armpits, trying to ignore the sand whipping against his legs. A half-moon threw silver light over Keith’s face. “What if whatever aliens – the Galra, the Alteans, or the Garrison, whoever screwed up my memory, what if they made it permanent, and whenever I try to get it back, _that_ —” he tapped his temple “—just happens instead? I’d rather never remember than go through that a _third_ time.” Keith opened his mouth, closed it again, and ran a hand across the back of his head.

            “Look, we can deal with that later,” he said. “But for now, we need somewhere to go.” A spike of anxiety ran straight through Lance. He stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and then groaned.

            “Oh God my… _fuck_ , Cal’s going to be so pissed at me.” He searched his pockets frantically, checking his pants and then his jacket again. “Dammit, my phone must be back at the shack.” He turned and started walking towards town. Keith ran to catch up with him.

            “Where are you going?”

            “To see my brother,” Lance said. He re-crossed his arms over his chest, shivering slightly. “Where are _you_ going?”

            “You can’t go see your family! That will be the first place the Garrison will look.” Lance paused, feet shifting.

            “Then I need to warn him,” he decided. “He deserves to know what’s happening.” He started to walk again. “Are you coming, spaceman?” He didn’t look back, but a moment later, Keith caught up with him again, matching his stride.

            “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go save your brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me the entire time I was writing this chapter: Keith please take a drink of water I know you have more pressing things to deal with but I don't think you've drunk water in like two days and you just hiked through a desert in spacesuit armor please you need to hydrate
> 
> Please leave comments I'm so afraid this chapter didn't live up to your expectations. We've been building to it for so long and it's the huge turning point of the entire fic, it's such a huge moment that's gone through so many iterations in my mind and I just really hope this is the best one.
> 
> If nothing else, I hope this is some good Klance to soothe your souls


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incredibly lovely [@artofkelseywooley](https://artofkelseywooley.tumblr.com/) was offering up commissions, so I decided to ask her to draw the opening of Chapter 13, and [it turned out absolutely GORGEOUS](https://artofkelseywooley.tumblr.com/post/176026494755/finished-a-new-commission-requested-by-the). Please go check out her blog, she's a really fantastic artist and a wonderful human being!

            Lance hesitated outside the door to the building for almost five full minutes before Keith snapped, “Are we going in or not?” Lance flinched, hunching away from him. Keith felt a rush of guilt wash over him, chased out almost instantly by a wave of exhaustion. If he had his way, they’d find an abandoned building or break into an empty house or something, get some rest, and go back to the shack the next day. On _his_ bike, which Lance _claimed_ was safe somewhere in the city, but wouldn’t tell him where yet. He didn’t want to go anywhere near Lance’s family. He didn’t want _Lance_ anywhere near Lance’s family, not without knowing what kind of ambush might be waiting for them. Keith was too tired to fight off the Galra right now, too tired to fast talk a Garrison lieutenant, too tired to deal with whatever situation they might stumble into with Lance in his happily oblivious, amnesiac state.

            Doubt tickled the edge of his mind, still. He’d been counting on Blue to confirm for him that this was the real Lance. If her barrier came down for him, then he’d know, no matter what Lance did or didn’t remember. He’d even held out hope that seeing Blue would trigger his memories, somehow, or that she could bring them back through their bond. Instead, they hadn’t gotten close enough for the two to properly connect, and all seeing her had triggered was some kind of attack, by the looks of it worse than any of the migraines that Foster Mother Number 3 used to get. Lance had almost fainted off the back of the bike. Keith was still amazed they had actually gotten away. He had no idea what had happened or why, but he also had no energy to deal with the possible consequences right now. He could only do his best to keep Lance safe until the Castle got here.

            And he _was Lance_ , Keith told himself fiercely. He was too… _Lance_ to be anyone else. The exasperated annoyance in his tone when he’d told Keith he had amnesia, the way he’d stared at Blue before his head split open, the way he hunched into his jacket, the way he was worrying his lip as he reached down to unlock the door – a thousand little details Keith hadn’t even realized he would recognize were suddenly powerfully familiar. Except when he’d been driving the bike, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Lance ever since he walked into the shack. If he looked away, if he so much as blinked, some primal part of him was terrified that Lance would simply evaporate, vanished to some other far corner of the universe. He felt like his heart was going to pound its way out of his chest the longer he looked at him. It _hurt_ , how desperately relieved he was to see him, even if he didn’t remember, even if they’d lost a lion, even if the way this reunion was happening was all wrong.

            If nothing else, the bruises blossoming around Lance’s neck gave him evidence. He had _felt_ that through Blue, as intimately and intensely as if he had been in Lance’s own body. The sickeningly recognizable shape of fingers – but too big, too wide, the spacing all wrong for a human hand – were starting to appear, black and purple against his dusky skin, almost swallowed by the evening’s shadows. Lance still hadn’t told him who had tried to strangle him.

            Lance paused again, hand on the doorknob. “He’s going to be really mad,” he said, his voice almost inaudible. “The last time we spoke, we had a… a bad fight, and we were supposed to patch things up this afternoon, but…”

            Keith could feel the edge of his helmet digging into his fingers with a curious kind of clarity. Everything else in his body felt distant, trembling muscles and parched lips and unsettled stomach whimpering for attention from someone else, someone that wasn’t quite him. The helmet dangling off his fingers felt more solid than the ground beneath his feet. His lips felt clumsy and uncoordinated as he tried to speak, as if he were trying to control them with puppet strings.

            “We’ve come this far. It’s better to just face him now and get it over with.” He moved forward, pushing past the still-hesitating Lance to shove the door open. Lance followed after, taking the lead again to take the stairs up three flights (Keith struggled not to pant for breath by the time they stopped) to a dim lit hallway. He paused again outside one of the doors, but then visibly steeled himself to unlock it and throw it open.

            There were two people sitting at the kitchen table. One of them lifted his head up out of hands as the door opened, and Keith just had time to register he was probably Lance’s brother – much stockier and squarer in his shoulders and jaw than Lance, and his skin was a shade darker, but they had the same tufty brown hair – before his brain processed that the second person was wearing a Garrison uniform. He drew on every last scrap of a weak burst of adrenaline to shove in front of Lance and summon his bayard. Both of the men had jumped to their feet, but fell back a step, gaping at the sword that materialized in his hand. Lance’s brother’s expression flipped from confusion to fury too fast for Keith to blink.

            “Get THE HELL AWAY FROM MY BROTHER,” he roared, drowning out Keith’s attempted, “Stay back!” For a moment, Keith thought he was legitimately going to charge him, sword be damned, before Lance shoved him aside.

            “Cal, stop, it’s okay! Keith, I told you to put that thing away. Stop pointing a sword at my brother! For God’s sakes.” Keith stumbled as Lance pushed him out of the way, his sword wavering, but kept it up towards the man in the Garrison uniform, until suddenly his arm went limp with shock, the bayard retracting back into his armor. He recognized the man in that uniform.

            The moment the sword was out of the way, Cal had rushed Lance and caught him in a hug so tight Keith was surprised he didn’t hear a rib crack. Lance’s arms were caught against his body as he struggled against the surprise pressure.

            “ _You STUPID KID_ ,” Cal was saying. His voice cracked. “ _You BASTARD. Don’t ever do that to me, ever again, do you understand? I fucking_ mean _it this time, Lance, I’m going to start using a baby monitor on you so that you don’t ever vanish like that again_.” Some part of Keith’s brain registered with scrambled surprise that Cal was speaking in Spanish and he could understand it perfectly, but he had no time to process it, because he was standing face to face with Commander Iverson.

            “What the hell are _you_ doing here?” he asked.

            “Good to see you too, Kogane,” Iverson replied dryly.

            “Can everyone stop trying to hug me to death today?” Lance said, his voice constricted by lack of air. Cal let go and stepped back, but Keith saw his eyes go immediately to Lance’s bruised neck. For a moment, he thought Cal was going to be sick.

            “ _Who did that?_ ” he asked.

            “ _Later_ ,” Lance said, his eyes darting to Keith, and doing a double-take when he saw Iverson. “Iver— Uh, Commander Iverson. What, what are you doing here?” Iverson glared out of his one good eye.

            “You boys are damn lucky I heard about what was going on and volunteered to come over here myself,” he said.

            “ _Lance, what on Earth is going on? Detective Hopkins called me this morning to tell me you’d rushed out of the police station with no warning and he couldn’t get back in touch with you, and you weren’t answering any texts or calls, and Louisa had no idea where you were, and then this guy turned up—_ ”

            “ _I said later_ ,” Lance said through gritted teeth. “ _Wait— What did he tell you_?”

            “ _Not much except that you were in dan—_ ”

            “If you two want to listen for a minute,” Iverson interrupted. “I don’t know how much time we might have.” Cal and Lance paused, turning. Keith’s legs chose that moment to give out from underneath him. Any last dregs of energy he’d been relying on had drained out when Iverson didn’t seem to be an immediate threat. Lance yelped with surprise as he went to his knees with a grunt, bracing himself against the floor on trembling arms.

            “Keith! Are you—”

            “I’m fine,” he tried to say, but it came out a lot more breathless than intended. “It’s just been a while since I slept.” Aside from a freezing cold doze in Blue’s hangar, it had been two days. Three? Had the attack on the Creleot System really only been yesterday morning? He shook his head slightly, trying to clear it, and suddenly found Lance filling his field of vision, a frown creasing his face. Before Keith could protest, he’d pressed the back of his hand against his forehead.

            “I don’t think you have a fever, but when was the last time you drank water?” he asked. Keith shrugged numbly.

            “Last night?” On the training deck, probably. Maybe. He’d meant to get a drink when he got to the shack, he remembered dimly. Lance’s presence had made him forget everything else.

            Lance’s hand was suddenly gone, and he felt disoriented and dizzy, worried he might overbalance onto his face. That would be embarrassing, he reflected. He pushed his palms harder into the floor, trying to stay balanced. A moment later, a cool glass was being pressed towards him. He reached up and struggled to take hold of it with a trembling hand. Lance’s fingers stayed wrapped around it, steading it, and he brought it up to his lips. He drank greedily, cool water soaking into his cracked lips and sticky tongue. Lance had the pull the glass away from him.

            “Not too much at once,” he scolded, and it was so motherly that Keith had a bizarre urge to burst into laughter. His head cleared slightly, though, his heart slowing its rhythm against his chest. He managed to pull himself up, over protests, to get into a chair. He slumped, holding his hand out for the glass of water. Lance hesitated.

            “I’ve got it, I promise,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Small sips only.” Lance handed over the glass and he took another gulp out of it. “So why the hell are you here?” he asked Iverson again. Iverson sighed, his eye squinting at Lance.

            “I guess you never tried to use to simulator. I thought for sure that would draw your interest.”

            “The simulator?” Lance asked, dumbfounded. “What does that have to do with—?”

            “I fixed it so that if you logged back in with your old access code there would have been… It doesn’t matter,” Iverson said. “We can talk here.”

            “Talk about _what_?” Cal growled. Keith focused on drinking water, barely processing the conversation happening around him, until Iverson turned to him.

            “You’ve made quite a mess of it, bringing one of the Voltron lions here,” he said. Keith choked, spewing water out his nose.

            “How do _you_ —?”

            “I saw you leave, you know. You gave us quite the air show before you flew off into space. I’d seen the carvings, but no one in the Garrison ever managed to find the actual entrance to where the lion was hidden. Only your parents ever found that, and neither of them would ever tell us where it was.” Keith set down the glass, both of his hands suddenly trembling too much to hold it steady again.

            “What.”

            “You’re damn lucky your temper gave me an excuse to kick you out after the Kerberos mission went south. I thought with the way you disappeared, you must have known,” Iverson continued over him. Keith felt cold and clammy. His heart was beating too fast again. Unintentionally, he and Lance locked eyes, and Keith saw his own cluelessness reflected back to him.

            “You’re going to have to start at the beginning,” Cal said. He was behind Lance, a scowl to break bricks on his face.

            “I don’t have time to coddle you,” Iverson snapped. Keith’s hands curled into weak fists against his knees.

            “What the hell do you know about my family?” he asked, and too late felt the Marmora blade pressing against his back and instantly regretted asking. _Not here, not like this_ , he thought desperately. _He can’t find out like this_.

            “All you need to know right now, is that the Garrison has been working with the Galra Empire for years. The true purpose of the Kerberos mission was to send them Sam Holt, as our official diplomat.” Tiredness be damned, Keith surged to his feet.

            “What the hell was Shiro, then?” he demanded, his voice strangled. “Was he just, just, _collateral damage_ to you?”

            “Shiro was a candidate for a new pilot of Voltron. As was Matt Holt.” Keith almost fell back into the chair. Iverson might as well have slapped him across the face.

            “He was a what.”

            “Earth doesn’t exactly have a lot of bargaining chips against an intergalactic Empire. We didn’t tell them we had the Blue Lion. But they were intrigued by our resemblance to Alteans. They had the Red Lion, and had been trying and failing to get it to accept a pilot for centuries. They were hoping humans might be the solution to that.” He fixed a glare on Keith. “They weren’t wrong.”

            “Wait, wait, wait,” Lance said, holding up a hand. “Are you saying that you _knew_ what had happened to me this whole time? And you came to the hospital and just said _nothing_?”

            “I tried to get you to go home to Cuba and get away from all this,” Iverson said. “When you didn’t ask to come back to the Garrison, I thought you had. If I hadn’t run into you, I wouldn’t have known Seitz had ever talked to you.”

            “Why didn’t you just _tell me_? I spent two months piecing together insane scribblings—”

            “I was trying to protect you, cadet!” Lance flinched backward, eyes wide. Cal’s scowl deepened. “The Garrison couldn’t yank you out of Cuba without implicating themselves in your disappearance even further, and they weren’t interested in trying as long as you stayed oblivious and amnesiac. But the moment they found out you remembered anything at all, you became top priority again. And now that _Lotor’s_ interested in you, they’ll keep you here by force if they have to.”

            “You were trying to _protect_ me?” Lance asked. Keith could see his jaw working, struggling for coherency. “I don’t understand. What were you trying to protect me _from_?”

            “Cadet, I don’t know what lies Lotor and Seitz twisted your head with. The other commanders haven’t trusted me since the Akira Kogane business.” Keith found he really had fallen back into his chair this time, with little memory of how it had happened.

            “The what?” he asked, his voice hollow. Iverson ignored him.

            “The Galra want to use you as a weapon, boy. They want the Garrison to provide human pilots that will fly Voltron for the Galra Empire, and you’re a proven candidate. I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s so special about this Voltron weapon that the Galra can’t recreate it. All I know is that I can’t let them get their hands on you.”

            “Why are you helping us?” Keith cut in. “Why would you be on our side?” Iverson turned, his eye boring into Keith.

            “Because Akira Kogane was once one of my brightest students, and they locked him away, executed him, and covered it up, all without a second thought,” he said. There was no remorse, no pity in his eye. Keith met his gaze and forced himself not to waver. “Now if you’re done fainting, you can’t stay here.”

*

            Keith was done fainting. Instead, he excused himself, stumbled to the bathroom, kneeled over Lance’s brother’s toilet, and vomited up all the water he had just drunk. One hand still braced against the seat, he scrubbed his mouth with toilet paper, and then reached up and yanked on the handle to flush. He sat back on his heels, breathing shallowly, and pressed the side of his head against the wall next to him, letting the cold of the tile seep into his skin. His eyes fell closed. He had a few moments of peace before he heard someone crack open the door behind him.

            “Are… you okay?” Lance asked hesitantly. A humorless smile curved Keith’s lips.

            “Yeah. Sure. The Garrison murdered my dad. I’m great.” He could hear fabric shifting – probably Lance shuffling uncomfortably behind him. “I tried to save my… I was trying to save you but instead I just flew away without telling anyone and handed your lion over to the Galra, and now I’m half-unconscious on a bathroom floor with no lion, no way back to the Castle, and nowhere to go.” His eyes were still closed. His chest felt tight and he hoped desperately he wasn’t about to cry. Or throw up again.

            “It could be worse?” Lance offered.

            “With my luck? Absolutely.” Lance fell silent for a moment.

            “So like, not to push you or anything, but I kind of believe Iverson when he says we should go somewhere else. Wow, I’m agreeing with Iverson. As if I needed confirmation that today is the day my life has officially gone insane.”

            “Only just today?” Keith asked. He didn’t intend the softness that crept in at the edge of his tone, but he was too tired. He could barely manage keeping his breaths even.

            “Pfff,” Lance said. “No, I guess you’re right, my life has been insane for months no matter which way you look at it. But yeah we… should probably go.”

            “Where?” Keith asked. He finally cracked his eyes open, turning his head slightly, rolling his skull along the wall, to look over his shoulder at Lance. Lance seemed caught off-guard by the sudden eye contact, looking down and away.

            “I don’t know,” he admitted. He looked back up, scanning Keith critically. “But you’re in no shape to go anywhere far.” Keith wanted to protest – he’d be fine, safety was more important – but his eyes were already trying to drift closed again. “Cal is also—” He broke off, tugging at his jacket sleeve. “Uh. Your spaceman armor and magic sword at least convinced him something is up, but I’m not sure how much he’s willing to believe yet. Aliens exist and they’re at the Garrison is… a bit of a jump for him.” Keith lost the battle against his eyes and they drooped closed again. He felt so heavy. With fumbling fingers, he reached up and pulled off the chest plate of his armor, dropping it on the floor next to him. He pulled open his uncooperative eyes again to undo his arm guards, and peeled his gloves off as well. He leaned back against the wall, feeling marginally unburdened. Lance was watching, his gaze fixed on Keith’s black spacesuit.

            “I guess that black suit is the thing they found me in,” he said. Keith turned his head and frowned.

            “They didn’t find you in full armor?” Lance shook his head.

            “The Garrison found— I guess it’s that armor, although it was a lot more banged up, they said in the ship I crashed in. Also the… my bayard. Only, mine turns into some kind of gun? How come yours does a sword?” Keith sat up, alarm coursing through him.

            “Wait— the Garrison has your bayard?” Lance shrugged.

            “Yeah, it’s in their basement. They showed it to me and ran a bunch of tests while I was holding it.” Keith fell back against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing the heel of his palm into the center of his forehead, trying to combat the pounding in his head.

            “Great. Just _great_ ,” he muttered. “This situation keeps getting better.” He dragged his hand down his face. “Allura should have been here by now,” he said, glaring at his helmet, set down beside the sink. “If we had the Castle…” His eyes darted to Lance, who had crossed his arms defiantly. “What? You still think I’m lying? Or, what was it, brainwashed?”

            “At this point I’m just assuming _everyone’s_ lying. And maybe. I don’t know. Do you feel brainwashed?”

            “I feel brain _dead_ ,” Keith muttered. Lance stared.

            “Did. Did you just make a _joke_?”

            “No.”

            “You made a joke. Oh my god, you _are_ brainwashed.”

            “Anyway it doesn’t matter,” Keith said. “The Galra must be blocking Blue’s signal somehow, so she can’t find us. We’ll have to come up with a solution for that… Tomorrow. I… I just need to…”

            “You need to _sleep_ ,” Lance cut in, sounding remarkably worried for someone who thought he was being mind controlled by an alien. He gave a little shake of his head. “That’s it. We’re staying here tonight. We’ll figure out where we can go in the morning.”

            “Lance, no—” Keith tried to cut in, but Lance spoke over him.

            “Hang on just a second,” he said. He disappeared for a moment, and Keith couldn’t find the strength to stand up and chase after him. He returned a moment later and tossed something at Keith. Cloth hit his face before he managed to get his hand up to catch it. It was a pair of boxers. “Don’t worry, they’re new, I haven’t worn them,” Lance said hastily as Keith stared. “I bought a bunch of emergency clothes since all of my stuff at the Garrison had been sent back to Cuba, but my parents sent me a box full of my own stuff as soon as they got home, and I never had to use these, and they got left behind here after I went back to the Garrison, so.” Keith could have sworn Lance had gone red, but maybe it was just the lighting playing tricks on him. “You need something to sleep in.”

            “…Thanks,” he managed eventually. Lance waved his arm, a little too wild to be simply dismissive.

            “Don’t, don’t worry about— I’m going to go talk Cal into letting you stay. And get Iverson out of here. You get changed. Try not to faint and fall and hit your head and die.” Keith nodded. Lance backed out and closed the door, almost slamming it shut. Keith glanced over at his helmet once more, gritting his teeth.

            “Come on, guys,” he muttered. “Where are you?”

*

            Lance pulled the door shut behind him as quietly as he could. Keith was sprawled across the hastily re-inflated air mattress, sleeping like the dead. Iverson had left them there reluctantly, only after seeing how exhausted Keith was. (The sight of Keith wearing not a stitch of clothing besides boxers practically falling on top of Commander Iverson, half-asleep, was probably burned into Lance’s brain for the rest of his life.) He’d said he would report that Cal hadn’t seen or heard from Lance all day, but he couldn’t guarantee that would mean they’d be safe for long.

            Lance turned to face Cal. The bedroom was cramped, barely space for anything besides a bed, a nightstand, and an IKEA dresser. Lance pressed up against the wall by the door, opposite Cal at the foot of his bed, creating barely a pace of distance between them. Cal’s expression made him fidget: more distraught and lost than Lance had ever seen.

            He licked his lips, _I tried to tell you_ warring with _I’m sorry_. He was tired of feeling like all this was somehow his fault, tired of blaming himself for his missing memories. He’d never asked for purple aliens or mysterious desert shacks or Keith Kogane appearing from thin air in a space suit. It wasn’t _his_ fault that his life had gotten so complicated. If he’d made a choice, if he’d gotten himself into this mess, he couldn’t remember it. What sane person would launch themselves into space willingly without warning? Of course he wanted to go to space, but he didn’t want to fly off on a months-long space war without even telling Mamá where he’d gone. He couldn’t imagine _that_ was the truth. But Lotor’s careful tale of the Alten witch-queen was seeming less and less certain by the second as well.

            REMEMBER THE GARRISON LIES

            He should’ve listened to Kent from the beginning. Except Kent was apparently Keith Kogane, and that made believing him a lot more complicated.

            Cal was staring at him. Lance opened his mouth, still not sure what he was about to say, but all in a rush, Cal beat him to it: “ _Whatever else just happened out there, I’m just… I’m just glad you’re okay, Lance._ ” Lance sighed deeply, pressing back more heavily into the wall, and nodded. With Keith and Iverson taken care of, the last of his adrenaline was fading and his exhaustion was catching up with him. “ _So… aliens_.”

            “ _Aliens_ ,” he agreed.

            Cal looked at him doubtfully. “ _Actually?_ ”

            “ _It wasn’t a joke the first time, either. But the Garrison told me I couldn’t tell you and I was afraid you were going to put me in an, an asylum or something. But yeah. Aliens._ ”

            “ _So everything Iverson was saying—_ ” Lance shrugged.

            “ _I don’t know. I don’t know who to believe. But I’ve seen the aliens. Lotor is like six and a half feet tall. He’s purple and has white L’Oréal hair._ ” Cal stared at him oddly. “ _Don’t ask. But, yeah, the aliens part is definitely real_.”

            “ _Why didn’t you_ tell _me?_ ” Lance’s head jerked up and his jaw clenched.

            “ _I just said, I tried to! Would you ever have believed me if you didn’t have the evidence staring you in the face? You would’ve just thought I was hallucinating, or—_ ”

            “ _I_ do _trust you, Lance. If you’d said—_ ”

            “ _Do you?_ ” Lance bit his lip as Cal’s frown etched deep into his forehead. “ _You trust what you can see in front of you. Which, I get it, you’re a scientist. That’s what you do. But since I got back you’ve been prying and poking at me whenever you get a chance, you_ don’t _trust me to go anywhere or do anything without telling you, you don’t trust me to get my memories back, and I’m pretty sure you’d never have trusted me telling you there were aliens if all those big heavy textbooks of yours told you something different.”_ Cal was quiet, staring at Lance throughout, his expression unchanging.

            “ _I was just_ worried _about you. I thought I lost you, and I—_ ”

            “ _And I didn’t want to freak you out even more by dragging you into– THIS_ ,” Lance said, gesturing towards the door. Cal’s expression hardened.

            “ _I’m the big brother, I’m supposed to be the one protecting you, not the other way around_ ,” he said. Lance’s hands clenched into fists.

            “ _Well maybe it’s my turn_ ,” he said. They were silent for a moment, staring one another down. Lance passed a hand over his eyes. “ _I don’t want to fight_ ,” he said quietly. Cal sighed.

            “ _I don’t either_ ,” he said. “ _But Lance, you’re scaring me. Can you agree that_ now _it’s time for you to go home? I can take you to the airport first thing in the morning.”_ Lance shook his head.

            “ _No_ ,” he said. “ _No I won’t, I— Look, I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but_ running away _can’t be the answer._ ” Cal crossed his arms.

            “ _It’s not running away, Lance, it’s keeping you safe from a bunch of people who are— the whole situation is deranged. If they’re after you like this is some sci-fi action movie, then we need to get you out of harm’s way, and then Louisa and I can go to the police and take Keith along— or, what, what was your solution going to be?_ ”

            “ _I don’t know._ ” Lance scuffed the floor in frustration. “ _But I doubt the police are going to buy the ‘aliens have infiltrated the Garrison and they’re after me’ story. Even if Hopkins believed me, the Garrison’s military. What are the_ police _gonna do, ask them nicely to trot out their aliens and tell the truth?_ ”

            “ _So you and Keith plan to take them on single-handedly?_ ”

            “ _We at least plan to STAY!_ ” Lance shouted, and cut off abruptly, surprised both by his own volume and how readily he’d linked himself to Keith. “ _I mean,_ ” he said, quieter, steadier, “ _if the Garrison is dangerous, I can’t just leave knowing that and go back to Cuba like everything’s fine._ ”

            “ _Why NOT?_ ” Lance stared.

            “ _Because it means people are in danger. I can’t just abandon that, especially when it’s somehow tied up to something I did. How could YOU?_ ”

            “ _You’re not the captain of a sinking ship, Lance, you don’t have to go down with it. You heard Iverson, the Garrison has been in contact with aliens for years. It’s not your responsibility to fix this, if it’s even real, and you don’t have a plan to do it anyway. Why would you stay? Just to throw yourself into danger for no reason at all, because it makes you feel important? This can get resolved without you. You don’t have to stay here._ ” Lance had been about to speak, but clamped his jaw shut tight. He struggled not to grind his teeth for a moment before he managed to respond.

            “ _I’ll take the couch tonight_ ,” he said. Cal’s face spasmed slightly, not prepared for the change of topic.

            “ _It’s a double, we can share my_ —”

            “ _The couch is fine_ ,” he said. “ _Besides, I know you snore and my headphones are at the Garrison._ ”

            “ _I have extra ear plugs, or I could just_ —”

            “ _Cal._ ” Lance paused and sighed. “ _It’s fine. Let’s just… talk in the morning, okay? We’re both tired._ ” Cal dropped the hand he had been pulling open the nightstand drawer with, reaching for ear plugs. He looked defeated, but he nodded.

            “ _Yeah, okay. In the morning._ ” Lance eased the door open, trying not to disturb Keith. The apartment was dark and quiet.

            “ _Goodnight_ ,” he called softly.

            “ _Goodnight_ ,” Cal answered. Lance was almost out the door before he added, “ _I love you._ ” He paused, one hand on the doorframe, and looked back.

            “ _Love you too_ ,” he said. He slipped back into the living room, closing Cal’s door behind him. Somewhere distant on the streets below, a siren wailed.

* 

            He woke to a gloved hand over his mouth. He thrashed in panic for a moment, his cries muffled, before he caught sight of Keith crouching next to the sofa. He put a finger against his lips and Lance nodded. Keith took his hand off Lance’s mouth and crept to the front door, pressing an ear against it. He’d already put the black suit from yesterday back on, although his armor was still piled in a corner. Lance sat up, breathing heavily, and listened. He could hear the faint sound of people in the corridor, heavy boots climbing the apartment stairs. Keith turned back and mouthed “get dressed.” Lance nodded, already reaching for another spare shirt and pants that had been forgotten here in his somewhat speedy and haphazard packing for the Garrison. Keith crossed to his armor and started to pull it on in record time, just as someone knocked loudly on the door.

            “Hello?” Keith and Lance both froze, staring at each other. “Open up! Police!” Keith viciously yanked the last pieces of armor on as the pounding continued. He pointed to the window.

            “Fire escape,” he hissed.

            “What about Cal?” Lance hissed back.

            “No time. They’re after you, not him,” Keith said. Lance, still barefoot, jumped off the sofa and moved towards Cal’s door. Keith intercepted him, hand locking around his wrist like a vice. “Shoes,” he said.

            “Open up in there! Police!”

            Lance shook his head, pulling away. “We’re not just going to run away and leave him,” he whispered vehemently.

            “There’s no time!”

            “Mr. Sanchez? This is the police!”

            “Let go of me!”

            Keith threw a panicked look over his shoulder at another round of knocking, the loudest yet. He turned back to Lance, looking stricken. “Lance, I’m sorry,” he said. Before Lance could react, Keith had bent down lightning-quick and tossed him over his shoulder, eliciting a loud “Hey!” that was lost in the pounding against the door. He carried Lance to the window, paying no attention to his frenzied whispered protests or the efforts he was making to shove off his back. He pulled the window open and pushed Lance out ahead of him. Lance scrambled against him but Keith was already climbing out, pulling the window as far closed behind him as he could. He shoved Lance forward.

            “We need to _move_ ,” he said. “Your brother’s going to be fine but _we won’t be if we stay here_. Don’t make me carry you down.” The cold metal of the fire escape pressed painfully against Lance’s bare feet. He made one last vain push against Keith.

            “He’s not going to know where we’ve gone,” he said plaintively. Keith’s face was set and hard.

            “Good,” he said. “Now _move_.”

            Lance moved.

*

            _Santa Monica_ , thought Detective Hopkins. When they found Katie Holt and Hunk Garrett, he was going to cash in every extra vacation and sick day he had and spend a month in Santa Monica. He didn’t need to fly anywhere exotic, he didn’t need to go to Fiji or wherever it was people with too much money to burn made people go for their destination weddings. He’d book a couple motels, take his time driving west, turn it into a short road trip, and then lie on a beach for three weeks doing absolutely nothing at all. Yeah, Santa Monica. That was the place. He should print out a picture and pin it up at his desk as motivation. Just keep dreaming of Santa Monica.

            But for now, he was getting increasingly concerned that he hadn’t been able to contact Lance since he’d dashed out of the station yesterday morning, looking pale and panicked. He tried his cell twice more when he got into the office that morning, left another voicemail, and then called Calixto again. He should dig out the sister’s phone number, he thought to himself, the one at the Garrison. He knew they had it on file. Maybe she’d heard from him, even if the Garrison themselves had not. Or _claimed_ they hadn’t, anyway. Hopkins felt like he’d been smelling more and more of a rat whenever he talked to the Garrison these days.

            “Detective Hopkins?” Cal’s voice was uncharacteristically baffled.

            “Good morning, Mr. Sanchez,” he said. “Have you heard from your brother? I just want to make sure he’s alright.”

            There was a very long pause on the other end.

            “Mr. Sanchez?” Hopkins pulled the phone away from his ear to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. “Hello?”

            “I think you might want to work on your inter-departmental communication,” Cal said dryly.

            “What?” Hopkins asked. He sat forward in his chair, frowning. “Mr. Sanchez, hello, are you there?”

            “Detective Hopkins?” A different voice came on, surprising him so that his brain scrambled a minute trying to place it.

            “Officer Ellison?” he asked.

            “Uh, hi,” Ellison said, sounding sheepish. Detective Hopkins was sitting straight up now, ignoring Cho, who had sidled up to his desk.

            “Explain,” he said.

            “Well, Lance— he didn’t come back to the Garrison last night, apparently, so the Garrison called us to help search— Sorry, Detective, I assumed you knew.”

            “Are you _at_ Calixto’s apartment? You didn’t think to just call first? Or check with me?”

            “The Garrison asked us to go in person, sir.”

            “ _Why_?” Cho was waving some kind of paper in his face and he gestured impatiently for her to put it down on the desk.

            “I don’t know, sir, he—”

            “What did you do, break down the door like Lance is a criminal on the run?” Ellison cleared his throat awkwardly on the other end.

            “We didn’t _break it down_ …”

            “Well, did you find him?”

            There was another brief pause. When Ellison did respond, it was all brusque professionalism. “No, sir, Calixto says he hasn’t seen or heard from him.” Hopkins passed a hand over his eyes.

            “Ellison, and whoever else is there with you, leave Calixto alone and get back to the station. We’ll sort out this mess in person,” he ordered.

            “Understood, sir.”

            “And apologize to Mr. Sanchez for bursting into his apartment at seven in the morning.”

            “Yes, sir.” The phone clicked off. Hopkins sighed wearily and turned to Cho, who was still holding the paper.

            “What is it?” he asked.

            “I looked into Chuck Kennet, the guy who was here yesterday? His ex wasn’t kidding when she said he was an alien conspiracy theorist. This guy runs four different discussion forums across different social media platforms and he’s frequently active on at least six other message boards, and we’re not even sure we’ve found them all.” She put the paper down in front of him: a list of blog URLs and forums and online profiles. “One of the ones Kennet himself runs caught my eye because it’s specifically dedicated to the Garrison. Most of it’s just crackpot theories, but skimming through it one person seemed to be posting real insider information. Stuff they couldn’t have found without either some serious hacking or being an actual member of the Garrison themselves. Their profile name is ‘pigeon.’” She paused, and Hopkins blinked.

            “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” he asked. Cho sighed in exasperation.

            “Come on, Hopkins, pigeon, _Pidge_? Don’t you think?” He frowned.

            “That’s one hell of a leap,” he said. “Have you traced the IP?”

            “We _can’t_ , that’s part of it— talk to the tech guys if you want to exact explanation, but from what I understand, this person was _good_ at covering their tracks when it comes to computers.”

            “Still doesn’t mean it’s Katie Holt,” Hopkins said skeptically.

            “Okay, well, how about this: their profile’s been dead for almost half a year, and the last post they made was _one week_ before Katie Holt went missing.” Cho grinned triumphantly.

            “What was their last post?” Hopkins asked, curious despite himself. He ran a cursory eye down the list of Chuck Kennet’s online presences. Cho’s grin disappeared into a grimace.

            “Something nonsensical, asking if a word – what was it? Volt-something? Voltron? Asking if the word ‘Voltron’ meant anything to anyone. No idea what she was on about, and no one answered. But listen to this. We got into Kennet’s account with his permission when we finally figured out where he lived yesterday. Guy had a sticky note with all his forum passwords up on the fridge. We were going back through his recent activity to see if we could find any explanation for his memory loss. Guess what message he sent just a week and a half ago?” Hopkins rolled his eyes in exasperation.

            “ _What_ , Cho?”

            “He sent a message to pigeon asking them to help him track down Keith Kogane.”

            Hopkins sat very still for a moment. Then he pushed his chair towards his computer and began typing furiously. Cho watched him.

            “What are you doing?” she asked.

            “Finding Keith Kogane,” he muttered. “He can’t have just disappeared off the face of the Earth, so someone out there knows where he is, and we’re going to find him. I want to talk to everyone who’s ever so much as passed him in the supermarket, if that’s what it takes. Somehow he’s a linchpin. If we find him, things are going to start coming clear.” Cho eyed him doubtfully.

            “You think?” she asked.

            “At this point?” Hopkins asked, picking up his phone again. “They fucking _better_.”

*

            “No!” Allura slammed her fist against the bridge controls. Hunk and Pidge glanced at each other nervously. She was bent over, sweat plastering wisps of her hair to her forehead. “No, I _refuse_ to believe we’ve lost Keith _and_ one of the lions now too.” Coran hesitantly reached up and placed a hand on her shoulder.

            “Keith’s got a lion,” he said. “And Blue probably took him straight to Lance, so she’s got a pilot. The two of them are resourceful. I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to signal us soon.” Pidge pressed her lips together. It wasn’t the time to voice her doubts on that front. Lance and Keith could cut their way out of a Galra ship if they had to. They could even make it look easy, if they didn’t get distracted bickering with each other. And, of course, assuming Lance wasn’t captive or injured or both. But Pidge doubted either of them would be able to make any kind of signal without help. If they ended up stuck in a place like the trash planet, their best bet would be to pick a direction and fly as fast as they could, praying for a habitable planet, preferably one with lifeforms that had invented interstellar communication.

            “Won’t Red go after Keith?” Hunk asked. “She’s done it before, and, I mean, if she needs to wormhole to get to him, then couldn’t one of us just pilot her like Keith did with Blue?” Coran shook his head.

            “What Keith did with Blue was extremely dangerous,” he said. “Frankly, I’m amazed he managed it at all. If it wakes up for you in the first place, trying to pilot a lion that doesn’t match your quintessence is like trying to ride a wild Pryxandredon through the middle of town without a harness or a saddle and not break anything.”

            “But Keith piloted the black lion before,” Shiro said, before Pidge could work out if she knew how to spell Pryxandredon in Altean. Allura dropped heavily to sit on the stairs, wiping away her sweaty hair.

            “Some people have the potential to pilot more than one lion. Quintessence is not a fixed type of energy, and it changes over the course of your life. Out of this group, Shiro was the best match for the black lion, especially when you all first arrived. But it was always possible Keith could learn to pilot Black instead of Red.” One of the mice ran up and nudged at her leg with a concerned chitter, and she scooped him into her lap. “Blue, however…” She shook her head.

            “I think Lance was dying,” Hunk said quietly. “Like, for real dying.” Pidge’s hand crept unwittingly towards the base of her throat. She, Hunk, and Shiro had all felt the strangling pressure against their necks, just before Blue had burst out of the Castle and through a wormhole, taking Keith with her. Personally, she wasn’t surprised Keith had managed to pilot Blue. If Blue wanted Lance back half as badly as Keith did, they would cut down Zarkon himself to get to him.

            “Why is this happening now?” she asked. “When Shiro got wounded fighting Haggar, none of us felt that. Why are we suddenly all experiencing it every time Lance is in pain or in danger?” Allura and Coran glanced at each other.

            “I’m not sure,” Allura sighed.

            “This hasn’t really happened before,” Coran agreed. “The former Paladins did eventually reach an almost telepathic connection with each other, but only when they were in Voltron, and it took a great deal of deliberate concentration from all of them at once.”

            “Then… can we amplify it?” Pidge asked. She shifted as everyone’s eyes turned to her. “I mean, if we can’t find them with a signal, maybe we can find them using the connection we have through Voltron.” She glanced between Hunk and Shiro. “Look you know I’m the first to turn to technology to solve things,” she said. “But that hasn’t worked for us so far.”

            “I think we should try anything we can think of,” Shiro agreed. “Hopefully Keith and Lance managed to signal us soon, but meanwhile…”

            Allura pushed to her feet. “To your lions, Paladins,” she said. “I have an idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that this fic has a [tag](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/tagged/memory+fic) on my [tumblr](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/)? It doesn't update super consistently or anything, and a lot of it is just [my ramblings](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/176287205577/ive-been-procrastinating-the-next-scene-of-wis) about whatever scene I'm working on.
> 
> But there are occasionally cool things there, like [Kelsey's fantastic art](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/176067595557/thatgirlonstage-artofkelseywooley-finished-a), or [teasers and extra tidbits](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/175674887592/before-the-begining-for-the-writing-meme-d), or [old pieces of drafting and outlining](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/175593131057/so-i-was-scrolling-through-the-document-thats-my) if that sort of process work interests you!
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and comments make my day!


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